Esther Wojcicki: Give Yourself A Free University Education at University of the People

Here is a Christmas-Hannukah gift you can give yourself, a loved one, a friend, or the world---A university education online for free. Is this some kind of trick?

Nope, it isn't a trick. It is a new university called University of the People (appropriately named) but the degrees are limited in scope right now since the University is fairly new. But the important ones are there.

It is the world's first tuition-free online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education.

Just go to their website and check it out for yourself.

The vision of University of the People is that "universal access to education is a key to world peace and global economic development." I agree and I am sure most people would.

Their program is all online. In the U.S., approximately 4 million students are currently enrolled in online education many of them in University of Phoenix, a for profit institution that has a large variety of course offerings, but it is expensive. On the other hand, University of the People provides an unprecedented tuition-free online academic experience to a worldwide-audience.

So far they offer four degree programs. All of these degrees are in areas where there is job growth---business administration and computer science. In the U.S. we have hundreds of computer science jobs that go unfilled each year. We need more computer science majors to meet our technological needs worldwide. We need businesspeople to be entrepreneurs and start new businesses.

For those who are job hunting, you might want to consider signing up for one of these courses They are accessible on your computer at home for free. No commuting, no travel expenses. It is right there on your desk.

Here are the four degrees offered at the University of the People:
1)Associate (A.S.-B.A.) and 2) Bachelor (B.S.-B.A.) degrees in Business Administration
3)Associate (A.S.-C.S.) and 4) Bachelor (B.S.-C.S.) degrees in Computer Science.

How can University of the People offer degrees for free? It is a non-profit organization and it accepts donations; these donations support many of the students. The University is supported by companies, foundations and individuals. Some students pay the low fees.

Presently, it has 300 students from 50 countries around the world. It costs just $4,000K for a student to go to the university for four years. Compare that with the tuition costs of $100,000 for four years at many universities.

The founder Shai Reshef understands the education world. He is an experienced entrepreneur who was Chairman of the Kidum Group a for-profit educational services company which he later sold to Kaplan, one of the world's largest education companies and a subsidiary of the Washington Post. Business Week recently wrote an article about Shai and the university.

Those who would like to support a student at the University of the People, can donate online. Any amount is welcome and it is tax deductible. Imagine being able to change someone's life for the better. Turns out that it would cost only $6 million to educate everyone in the world at University of the People, according to Shai. Not much when you consider how much we spend on just defense.

For those of you who want give yourself a gift of a degree, go online and fill out an application to enroll. It is an exciting opportunity and the time of year to be giving.

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Follow Esther Wojcicki on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EstherWojcicki

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-wojcicki/give-yourself-a-free-univ_b_1168585.html

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Kim's last gift to NKorea: loads of fish (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea ? The people of North Korea's capital have received a special gift from recently deceased leader Kim Jong Il: loads and loads of fish.

North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency has reported that Kim was concerned about the supply of fish in Pyongyang, and had looked into the matter the day before he died. North Korea announced Monday that he died of a massive heart attack on Saturday.

The report, issued late Friday, said Kim's young son and heir, Kim Jong Un, "took all necessary measures to truck fresh fish to the capital city in time and supply the fish to the citizens, even in the mourning period."

North Korea is in official mourning until after Kim's funeral Dec. 28-29.

North Korean media have been flowing with eulogies for Kim Jong Il, who ruled the country for 17 years after the death of his father, North Korea's national founder and eternal President Kim Il Sung. Both Kims were the object of intense personality cults.

With Kim Jong Un poised to extend the Kim family dynasty into an additional generation, North Korea is quickly building the mythology by emphasizing his bloodline and the Kim family legacy, from its roots as revolutionaries fighting the Japanese to their spiritual role as protectors of the North Korean people.

The state media has broadcast constant scenes of public mourning, with women and children wailing, soldiers bowing before Kim's smiling portrait and senior officials lining up to view his body, which is on display in a glass case at the same funeral palace where his father's embalmed remains are on view.

North Korea has also claimed Kim's death generated a series of spectacular natural phenomena, creating a mysterious glow atop a revered mountain, cracking a sheet of ice on a lake with a loud roar and inspiring a crane to circle a statue of the nation's founder before perching in a tree and drooping its head in sorrow.

The reports have stressed how the North Korean people are deeply indebted to the largesse of their leaders, despite the deepening political isolation and economic hardship they have faced in recent years, including severe famines and shortages of electricity, food and other necessities.

"Leader Kim Jong Il is always with us as we have respected Comrade Kim Jong Un identical to him," KCNA quoted Song Hye Yong, a 42-year-old woman, as saying as she carried "a bag full of fish in her hand."

The report also quoted Kim Jong Hwa, a saleswoman at a grocery in the central district of the city, as saying she was deeply touched by leader Kim Jong Il's gift of fish to the people.

"All of citizens are deeply moved by his deep care," she said.

Despite initial jitters over possible instability, officials in Seoul and Washington are calling the political transition in North Korea smooth so far. There have been no outward signs of unrest on the streets or unusual troop movements along the borders.

The North, however, is highly sensitive to what it sees as outside threats.

Its government-run website, Uriminzokkiri, has slammed South Korea for putting its military on alert, calling that move an "insult" to a nation in mourning.

The Korean peninsula remains in a state of war because the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 in a truce, not a peace treaty. Tanks and troops still guard the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone dividing the two sides.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111224/ap_on_re_as/as_kim_jong_il

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Mitchell 2012 Ford F-150 New Truck near Sioux Falls, SD Brookings, SD Vern Eide Ford Lincoln for $39,155

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Daily Tip: How to track Santa on your iPhone or iPad

Little ones trying to figure out just how exactly they can track Santa on their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad this year? Well, Google Maps and NORAD to the rescue! They’ve got Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen — and Rudolf! — of...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/EGtAE6G3ln8/story01.htm

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Gingrich fails to qualify for Va. primary ballot

Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)

Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for Virginia's Super Tuesday primary ballot, the latest setback for a candidate whose standing in polls has been slipping. Gingrich's campaign said he would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, though state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.

The state party said early Saturday that Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the March 6 ballot.

Failing to get on the ballot in Virginia, where Gingrich lives, underscores the difficulty first-time national candidates have in preparing for the long haul of a presidential campaign.

And it illustrates the advantage held by Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has essentially been running for president for five years. Romney's team, larger than those of most of his opponents, has paid close attention to filing requirements in each state. He will appear on the Virginia ballot along with Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who also has run a national campaign before.

Ironically, Gingrich had a slight lead over Romney in a Quinnipiac poll of Virginia Republicans released earlier in the week.

The former House speaker surged in popularity in early December and tried to use that momentum to make up for a stalled campaign organization. But his standing in polls has slipped in recent days amid a barrage of negative ads in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses begin the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

Three other candidates ? Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman ? did not submit signatures before Virginia's deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday.

Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's primary system on Saturday, saying that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates and vowing to run a write-in campaign.

"Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates," Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement. "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."

However, according to state law, "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."

"Virginia code prohibits write-ins in primaries. He can't do it," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond.

Tobias said Gingrich may have had trouble meeting a requirement that he must submit 400 signatures from each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.

Gingrich's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing Wednesday from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he had supporters sign petitions before entering a rally in Arlington, Va.

Virginia GOP spokesman Garren Shipley said in a statement that volunteers spent Friday validating signatures on petitions that Romney, Paul, Perry and Gingrich had submitted. "After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed. Shipley did not respond to telephone calls Saturday seeking comment.

Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests.

Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March.

Meanwhile, Virginia's Democrats said President Barack Obama's re-election campaign gathered enough signatures to get him on the state's primary ballot though he was the only candidate who qualified.

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Associated Press writers Will Lester and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-24-GOP%20Ballot/id-d7e26ae174854bc5bc0de49defb48205

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Family Photo: The Kidman-Urbans Hit the Street

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman stay in step with daughter Sunday Rose, 3?, while shopping in Soho Sunday afternoon in New York City.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/0xMgbZiEQ4A/

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Why humans are so sociable these days

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2011) ? Humans have evolved to become the most flexible of the primates and being able to live in lots of different social settings sets us apart from non-human primates, suggests research by University of Oxford and the University of Auckland.

A research paper, published in the journal Nature, has provided important new clues to how humans network and socialise today by exploring the evolutionary history of social groupings among primates. The study analysed patterns of social groups among living primates, as well as examining the 'the root' of the family tree, in 217 primate species. The researchers then used Bayesian data modelling to reconstruct the most likely explanation for how the grouping behaviour of primates evolved over 74 million years.

Their key finding is that the main step change in social behaviour occurred when primates switched from being mainly active at night to being more active during the day. Primates started out as solitary foragers as by night they could survive by moving quietly on their own in the dark. However, once they switched to daytime activity, they could be seen and were more vulnerable to attack by predators unless they could show strength in numbers. This research paper provides evidence to show that this switch in activity coincided with a significant change in social behaviour as primates started to 'gang up' for the first time. The researchers conclude that social bonding began as a way of adapting to a new threat.

The paper also suggests that primates went directly from being solitary foragers into large, mixed-sex groups where group members were loosely bound together. Members could come and go as needed, suggests the research, which is a behaviour still observed in some primates, like lemurs, today. The emergence of more stable groups of primates, in which individuals formed clusters that were smaller in size and maintained close social links, is likely to have developed much later says the paper.

These findings are significant as they throw into doubt previous theories about the evolution of primate social grouping patterns. Previous studies have suggested that complex primate social groups were composed of smaller units that stacked up rather like building blocks. Others have suggested that the bond between a mother and daughter later extended to include other related females, and it was this network of relationships that underpinned the social grouping patterns of mammals.

The data, studied by the research team, included a huge range of social grouping patterns: solitary individuals, family- bonds, pair-bonds, harems, multi-male and multi-female groups. The researchers discovered that the bonding behaviour of primates was strongly determined by their ancestors, with closely related species having very similar social behaviour.

Once the transition from individual to group living took place -- 52 million years ago in the ancestral line that gave rise to humans, and later in another branch of the primate family tree -- no shift back to solitary behaviour ever occurred. Primate ancestors that subsequently began living in pairs did not switch back to group living, whereas those that began living in harems could transition back and forth with large groups. There was never a transition directly from pair to harem living or vice versa.

The researchers conclude that only humans have had the flexibility to live in a range of different, complicated social settings. Throughout history, humans have lived in monogamous and polygamous societies; in nuclear family and extended family groups. Beyond the home, they have socialised in different work settings, as well as being part of the complicated social structure of wider human society.

Lead author Dr Susanne Shultz, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said: 'There is an amazing flexibility in the way humans have managed to socialise, network and live together, both in groups and wider society. We have a huge variety of social settings to cope with, according to the different cultural practices and customs. This flexibility in the human lineage has not evolved to anything like this level in other primates. Our findings support previous studies that suggest that more brain power is needed for groups that have a more complicated social life.

'Co-author Kit Opie, also from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, said: 'These analyses allow us to look back in time to understand major step changes in social evolution amongst our closest relatives. We now understand why primate sociality is inherently special, as bonded social groups are unusual in mammals, yet the norm in primates.'

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Oxford.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Susanne Shultz, Christopher Opie, Quentin D. Atkinson. Stepwise evolution of stable sociality in primates. Nature, 2011; 479 (7372): 219 DOI: 10.1038/nature10601

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111220205212.htm

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