An elderly man who confessed to stealing money from a Sears store in the 1940s gave the money back on Monday - with interest.
The man hand-delivered an envelope addressed to "Sears manager" to a customer service counter on the second floor of the store in downtown Seattle at about 10 a.m.?(1 p.m. ET)
KING5
An envelope containing $100 in cash and a handwritten note that was handed in at a Sears store in Seattle.
Inside the envelope was a note and a $100 bill.
The note read: "During the late [forties] I stole some money from the cash register in the amount of $20-$30 ... I want to pay you back this money in the amount of $100 to put in your theft account."
"I think his conscience has been bothering him for the past 60 years," said Sears manager Gary Lorentson.
"That is heartwarming," said one customer, "awesome."
"It must have made him feel good inside to do that," said another.
Store security cameras caught the elderly man on video, but Sears won't release it, and they don't know who he is.
The store plans to put the money toward helping needy?families during the holiday season.
A tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich? That's what China's Fuzhou Rockchip has apparently produced with the Android 4.0 PAD, as seen by our brethren over at Engadget China. According to the manufacturer, this slate is the very first to run Android 4.0, having been put together only a couple of weeks after Google released the source code for its latest OS. Rockchip's being rather mum on specifics and release dates for supported devices, though it has revealed that this particular prototype's powered by its 1GHz RK2918 processor. The company's released a teaser video as well -- check it out for yourself after the break, and do also head over to Engadget China for some hands-on shots.
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Syracuse University fired assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine amid allegations that he sexually molested boys, rocking the multi-million dollar world of collegiate sports with more questions of sexual abuse and oversight, the university said on Sunday.
"At the direction of Chancellor (Nancy) Cantor, Bernie Fine's employment with Syracuse University has been terminated, effective immediately," the school said on its website.
Fine, who had been on administrative leave since November 17, is the target of a grand jury investigation into accusations that years ago he molested a former ball boy, Bobby Davis, now 39, and at least one other boy, his stepbrother Mike Lang, now 45, when they were juveniles.
Fine's boss for the past 35 years, Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim, said on Sunday he supported the firing, withdrawing support he'd extended Fine when the allegations resurfaced this month. The university first investigated and dismissed the allegations for lack of corroboration in 2005.
"I have never witnessed any of the activities that have been alleged," Boeheim said in a statement posted on the Syracuse Orange sports Facebook page.
"What is most important is that this matter be fully investigated," he said. " ... I deeply regret any statements I made that might have inhibited that from occurring or been insensitive to victims of abuse," he said.
The firing came hours after ESPN reported it had an audio recording of a 2002 conversation between Davis and Fine's wife Laurie in which she said she knew about the alleged molestation but felt unable to stop it.
Neither the tape nor any additional witnesses surfaced when the university conducted its own 2005 investigation into Davis' allegations, Cantor said in a statement on the school website.
Now that a new probe is underway by Syracuse Police, the school has hired an independent law firm to "review our procedures in responding to the initial allegations. ... We need to learn all we can from this terrible lesson," she said.
Fine has called the accusations against him "patently false in every aspect."
LATEST JOLT
The firing was the latest jolt to major college athletics already reeling from allegations of abuse and possible cover-ups at football powerhouse Penn State, where a former assistant coach faces 40 sexual abuse charges.
Those accusations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, charged by a grand jury with sexually abusing eight young boys, took down legendary football coach Joe Paterno and school president Graham Spanier.
They were fired for failing to tell police about the allegations of abuse once they learned of it years earlier. Two other Penn State officials were charged with perjury.
Syracuse is the third major American university to disclose alleged abuse since the school year began. South Carolina military college The Citadel also said it had failed to tell police about a student accused in 2007 of inappropriate behavior with children at a college summer camp.
In Syracuse, police have said they opened an investigation into Fine when Davis' stepbrother came forward with his own allegations. The grand jury is also investigating those allegations but no criminal charges have been filed.
Fine's lawyer, speaking on Sunday before he was fired, said his client would no longer speak publicly about the case.
"Mr. Fine will not comment on newspaper stories beyond his initial statement," attorney Karl Sleight said in a statement in response to allegations by a third accuser, Zach Tomaselli, made on Facebook and carried in media reports on Sunday.
"Mr. Fine remains hopeful of a credible and expeditious review of the relevant issues by law enforcement authorities," Sleight said. Attempts to reach Syracuse police and city officials on Sunday for further comment were unsuccessful.
Syracuse's basketball team is currently undefeated and the university in upstate New York is widely heralded as having one of the top college basketball programs in the country.
(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Bohan)
As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent). That's an impressive jump considering the 2009 to 2010 increase in Black Friday spending was only 9 percent. Thanksgiving Day saw an 18 percent increase in online spending to $479 million. U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15 percent from the corresponding days last year.
People have long wondered about the purpose of dreams. But scientists say they now know: they sooth the sting out of troubling memories. And when dreams don?t do their job, horrific memories can take over a person?s life, as they do with PTSD, a new study suggests.
VIENNA, Va. (AP) ? VIENNA, Virginia (AP) ? The owner of the Ringling Bros. circus has agreed to pay a $270,000 fine to settle allegations that it violated federal animal-welfare laws in its handling of elephants, tigers, zebras and other exotic animals.
?????The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the civil penalty announced Monday is the largest ever assessed against an animal exhibitor under the Animal Welfare Act.
?????Vienna-based Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus and other well-known acts such as Disney on Ice, said it does not admit to violating the law and agreed to the settlement as a cost of doing business to resolve its differences with the USDA.
?????"We look forward to working with the USDA in a cooperative and transparent manner that meets our shared goal of ensuring that our animals are healthy and receive the highest quality care," said a statement released by Kenneth Feld, chief executive officer of Feld Entertainment.
?????In inspection reports from 2007 through this year, inspectors said circus handlers made elephants perform when they were ill and used the same wheelbarrows to feed meat to tigers and haul away their waste, among other allegations.
?????An inspection report from August alleged that a 35-year-old female Asian elephant, Banko, was forced to perform at a show in Los Angeles despite a diagnosis of sand colic and observations that she appeared to be suffering abdominal discomfort. Circus officials told the inspectors that separating Banko from the performing elephants would have been even more distressing to her.
?????The inspection reports also cited splintered floors and rusted cages used to contain big cats such as tigers, and an incident in March 2008 where two zebras briefly got loose from their enclosure at 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore. In 2010, another zebra escaped its enclosures in Atlanta and had to be captured by area law enforcement, according to the reports.
?????Feld spokesman Steve Payne said that, generally, the circus has seen an increase in recent years in inspections not only by the USDA but also by state and local regulators. He said that from June to September, one of the circus' traveling units was inspected 82 times by 18 different agencies.
?????"We're highly regulated. We accept that regulation. We embrace it," Payne said.
?????Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has filed numerous complaints with USDA against the circus, especially for its handling of elephants, said the fine is a good first step. But it called on the government to confiscate the elephants.
?????"What remains to be done is for the public to be made aware of this history of abuse so that people will know to keep their children away from the circus," PETA said.
?????As part of the settlement, Ringling also agreed to hire a compliance officer who will ensure that all employees follow the rules outlined in the Animal Welfare Act. All employees who handle animals will also have to undergo compliance training.
Scientists identify key area that could sever communication between brain and heart in diseasePublic release date: 28-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Clancy caroline.clancy@bristol.ac.uk 44-117-928-8086 University of Bristol
A team of neuroscientists and anaesthetists, who have been using pioneering techniques to study how the brain regulates the heart, has identified a crucial part of the nervous system whose malfunction may account for an increased risk of death from heart failure. The findings, published online (ahead of print) in the Journal of Physiology, could lead to more targeted therapies to help reduce serious illness and death in cardiovascular disease.
The research team, led by Dr Tony Pickering and Professor Julian Paton from the University of Bristol and colleague Professor Robin McAllen from the Florey Neuroscience Institute in Melbourne, developed novel methods which enabled them to explore the activity of nerve cells as they control the beating heart.
The brain controls the heart through two divisions of the nervous system; parasympathetic (vagal) and sympathetic nerves. One of these nerves, the vagus, acts to slow heart rate as part of protective cardiovascular reflexes, which are vital for cardiac health. A loss of vagal control is a major risk factor in human cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and hypertension.
Vagal information to the heart is transmitted through a special group of nerve cells that remarkably lie on and within the beating heart muscle. Until now, these important neurones have proved especially difficult to access and record in a system with preserved natural connections. However, academics at the Bristol Heart Institute and Bristol Neuroscience have developed a novel technique that allows the neurones to be held stable while the heart is still beating and their central neural connectivity remains intact.
Using this method the researchers were able to produce high-precision recordings from the cardiac ganglion neurones on the surface of the beating heart whilst retaining their inputs from the nervous system.
The results reveal how these neurones process their inputs and demonstrate that the ganglion plays a key role in regulating the level of vagal tone reaching the heart. This identifies the cardiac ganglion as a site at which the vagal transmission may fail and therefore a potential target for interventions to restore vagal control in cardiovascular diseases.
Dr Pickering, Wellcome Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Reader in Neuroscience and Consultant in Anaesthesia in the University of Bristol's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, said: "These findings are important because they clearly show the cardiac ganglion as a key player in determining the level of vagal tone reaching the heart.
"As loss of vagal tone is found in a number of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, following heart attack, in high blood pressure and diabetes, and is associated with poor prognosis and an increased risk of death, our results indicate that therapies targeted at the cardiac ganglion could restore vagal tone and potentially improve outcomes."
Helene Wilson, Research Advisor at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "The vagus nerves are absolutely vital for the control of the speed and regularity of our heart's beat. We don't know a great deal about how the vagus nerves exert this control, and researchers have found it very hard to study it - partly because of the motion of the heart as it beats. These researchers have now developed a technique to study the processes in an intact vagus nerve which is still attached to heart, and have already helped us understand the process better. New insights into how the vagus nerves transmit their effects on the heart could lead to important new ways to treat patients with diseases such as heart failure, arrhythmias and hypertension."
###
The study is a result of an international collaboration between the University of Bristol and academics at the Florey Neuroscience Institute in Melbourne. The work is funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in Australia.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Scientists identify key area that could sever communication between brain and heart in diseasePublic release date: 28-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Clancy caroline.clancy@bristol.ac.uk 44-117-928-8086 University of Bristol
A team of neuroscientists and anaesthetists, who have been using pioneering techniques to study how the brain regulates the heart, has identified a crucial part of the nervous system whose malfunction may account for an increased risk of death from heart failure. The findings, published online (ahead of print) in the Journal of Physiology, could lead to more targeted therapies to help reduce serious illness and death in cardiovascular disease.
The research team, led by Dr Tony Pickering and Professor Julian Paton from the University of Bristol and colleague Professor Robin McAllen from the Florey Neuroscience Institute in Melbourne, developed novel methods which enabled them to explore the activity of nerve cells as they control the beating heart.
The brain controls the heart through two divisions of the nervous system; parasympathetic (vagal) and sympathetic nerves. One of these nerves, the vagus, acts to slow heart rate as part of protective cardiovascular reflexes, which are vital for cardiac health. A loss of vagal control is a major risk factor in human cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and hypertension.
Vagal information to the heart is transmitted through a special group of nerve cells that remarkably lie on and within the beating heart muscle. Until now, these important neurones have proved especially difficult to access and record in a system with preserved natural connections. However, academics at the Bristol Heart Institute and Bristol Neuroscience have developed a novel technique that allows the neurones to be held stable while the heart is still beating and their central neural connectivity remains intact.
Using this method the researchers were able to produce high-precision recordings from the cardiac ganglion neurones on the surface of the beating heart whilst retaining their inputs from the nervous system.
The results reveal how these neurones process their inputs and demonstrate that the ganglion plays a key role in regulating the level of vagal tone reaching the heart. This identifies the cardiac ganglion as a site at which the vagal transmission may fail and therefore a potential target for interventions to restore vagal control in cardiovascular diseases.
Dr Pickering, Wellcome Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Reader in Neuroscience and Consultant in Anaesthesia in the University of Bristol's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, said: "These findings are important because they clearly show the cardiac ganglion as a key player in determining the level of vagal tone reaching the heart.
"As loss of vagal tone is found in a number of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, following heart attack, in high blood pressure and diabetes, and is associated with poor prognosis and an increased risk of death, our results indicate that therapies targeted at the cardiac ganglion could restore vagal tone and potentially improve outcomes."
Helene Wilson, Research Advisor at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "The vagus nerves are absolutely vital for the control of the speed and regularity of our heart's beat. We don't know a great deal about how the vagus nerves exert this control, and researchers have found it very hard to study it - partly because of the motion of the heart as it beats. These researchers have now developed a technique to study the processes in an intact vagus nerve which is still attached to heart, and have already helped us understand the process better. New insights into how the vagus nerves transmit their effects on the heart could lead to important new ways to treat patients with diseases such as heart failure, arrhythmias and hypertension."
###
The study is a result of an international collaboration between the University of Bristol and academics at the Florey Neuroscience Institute in Melbourne. The work is funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in Australia.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
If you have an old LCD display you can remove the polarized and anti-glare films from the inside of the monitor's glass surface and reassemble it; this will make the screen look bright white to the naked eye. To see the actual display you just need to use a bit of paint thinner to remove the anti-glare film from the polarization film and cut that to match the frames of an old pair of glasses. This produces a monitor that can only be seen when you're wearing the polarization filter glasses.
Instructables user dimovi provides step-by-step instructions and photos that describe how to remove the polarization filter from the display and cut that filter to make lenses for disposable 3D glasses or old sunglasses. I'm curious to see if regular polarized sunglasses would also be able to view the hacked display.
Privacy monitor made from an old LCD Monitor | Instructables via Hack-a-Day
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We're still waiting for our chance to nab a Galaxy Nexus on this side of the pond, but it seems European users haven't exactly been having the best luck with their first-run devices. Fortunately, it looks like the folks at MoDaCo have a (quasi-official) fix for one of the Galaxy Nexus's most irritating issues: the dreaded volume bug. If you haven't seen the volume bug strike before, do yourself a favor and check it out below. When the Nexus hops onto the 900MHz 2G band (or is even placed near another device that is), the volume level can be seen jumping around wildly.
Thirty-two years ago, I met two American college girls while hitchhiking in Switzerland. They were studying in Florence, and I asked them their favorite place in Italy. They surprised me by naming a place I had never heard of before: the Cinque Terre. Curious, I headed south and discovered a humble string of five villages along Italy's Riviera coast with almost no tourism ? and, it seemed, almost no contact with the modern world. I fell in love with this stretch of Mediterranean coastline and have returned almost every year since.
On Oct. 25 of this year, a freakishly intense rainstorm ripped through the region and inflicted serious damage on the Cinque Terre towns of Monterosso and Vernazza. Torrents of water rampaged from the surrounding mountains into town, carrying with it tons of mud and debris. Massive flooding destroyed homes and businesses, and landslides filled the streets with rocks, dirt, and debris up to 12 feet deep. Entire ground floors were buried.
Photos and videos of the devastation show storefronts ripped off and fishing boats crumbled on rocks. The images of spindly, pastel Vernazza buried in rubble were especially difficult to look at. I've been there so many times that I actually think of it as a person. I believe I know more people in Vernazza than in all of Spain. After the disaster, the town looked like a crime scene. I felt as if I'd lost a friend ? as if nature had murdered someone I loved.
For some, it did. At least six people died in the flash floods, and several are still missing. In one heartbreaking account on the Save Vernazza website, Valentino Giannoni recalls the tense hours in his father's gelato shop as he did everything he could to keep his wife and 3-year-old son above the rising tide. They survived ? but Valentino's father was swept away while trying to keep the flood from consuming his family.
One of my staff members was also in Vernazza at the time. She and her family were eating pesto pasta when water started seeping into the restaurant. As the water level rose, everyone migrated into another room and took refuge on tabletops while several people held their bodies against the door to try to keep the water from raging in.
Danger doubled As the group waited for the storm to subside, they started to smell gas. The floodwaters had ripped the restaurant's stove from the wall, leaving an exposed gas connection. As she recounted, they didn't know if they were going to drown or die in an explosion.
After more than two hours, the floodwaters receded momentarily (likely slowed by a pile-up of jumbled, overturned cars in the ravine), allowing everyone in the restaurant to escape to higher ground. Shortly thereafter, the rain increased, and the river rose even higher, pushing everything in its path into the sea. My staff member and her family ended up at Al Castello restaurant, where the owners provided food for about 100 tourists and townspeople. Later that evening, the owners of the Gianni Franzi hotel took them in; they were evacuated by boat the next morning.
Emergency responders have been working nonstop since the disaster and have made a lot of progress clearing the streets. I've heard from many friends in the region. The communities of Vernazza and Monterosso are in for a bleak, backbreaking winter of digging out and rebuilding, but they are determined to come back. One hotelier in Monterosso has promised to fix the damage in time to welcome our first tour group next year, in March.
I'll be back too. One of my favorite rituals in Vernazza is to walk the main drag at midnight, from top to bottom. In ancient times, a stream rushed down the middle of this street. At some point, generations ago, the stream was put under the pavement. But it still flows, draining water from the terraced vineyards that surround the town on three sides. At one point, you can actually hear the soft sounds of water flowing beneath the road, from vineyards to the sea. It's strange to imagine that within the course of a few hours, this underground rivulet turned into a roaring river that claimed lives.
When people ask me what they can do to help, I tell them to keep the Cinque Terre in their travel dreams. Like I do almost every year, I'll be traveling here next spring to do some filming and update my guidebook. Witnessing the damage ? and the progress ? firsthand will be both inspirational and bittersweet. Most of all, I look forward to taking that midnight stroll, stream trickling underneath my feet, just like I have for the past 30 years.
(Rick Steves writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. E-mail him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, Wash. 98020.)
? 2011 Rick Steves ... Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tZkJDaKjkQzg15csrbLKHAtpkobb_iCwEwPGeNLpv9hH7K8C5eLRxHDddI1I_d5Lwm7kaSt_hEosl0tHmUWb7FB8gZteW0U_CWg4yf8Mg=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Nov-2011
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If you have an old LCD display you can remove the polarized and anti-glare films from the inside of the monitor's glass surface and reassemble it; this will make the screen look bright white to the naked eye. To see the actual display you just need to use a bit of paint thinner to remove the anti-glare film from the polarization film and cut that to match the frames of an old pair of glasses. This produces a monitor that can only be seen when you're wearing the polarization filter glasses. 
We're still waiting for our chance to nab a Galaxy Nexus on this side of the pond, but it seems European users haven't exactly been having the best luck with their first-run devices. Fortunately, it looks like the folks at