New Nissan Leaf Models Will Feature Wireless Charging And Other Electrical Advances

We like the Leaf. It's not a good choice for everyone, but it's a great second car or city car, set back the most perhaps by the trouble one has to take in charging it. At home you are advised to spring for a high-capacity outlet, and abroad you must plan your trips to coincide with existing charge points. Anything that can make adding power to these cars easier will increase their marketability. To that end, Nissan has announced that the next generation of Leafs (Leaves?) will feature a wireless charging mechanism that, they say, will charge as fast as a normal wall outlet.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/D0Xt4RDdoeI/

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George McGovern hospitalized after fall in South Dakota (tbo)

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'Honey Badger' leads No. 1 LSU past Georgia 42-10 (AP)

ATLANTA ? LSU slogged its way through a brutal first half. The nation's top-ranked team had only 12 yards and not even a single first down.

The "Honey Badger" didn't care.

He just took what he wanted ? a trip to the national championship game.

Tyrann Mathieu turned in an MVP performance when the Tigers needed him most, running back a punt 62 yards for a touchdown, setting up another score with a fumble recovery and finally finishing off No. 12 Georgia with his best play yet, a whirling dervish of a return that led to the decisive TD of a 42-10 victory in the Southeastern Conference championship game Saturday.

LSU (13-0) advanced to a spot in the BCS title game in New Orleans, just 75 miles from its Baton Rouge campus. The Tigers opponent will be announced Sunday night, but SEC West rival and No. 2 Alabama ? already beaten by the Tigers 9-6 in overtime a month ago ? had the inside track even though it didn't win its division.

The Bulldogs tried to really shake things up, racing to a 10-0 lead that could've been even bigger if they hadn't dropped a pair of potential touchdown passes in the first quarter. LSU looked downright awful on offense, going three-and-out on all seven of its possessions before halftime.

But, thanks to Mathieu, the deficit was only 10-7 when the teams went to the locker room. He took a punt at his own 38, found an opening and was gone ? all the way to the end zone for his second punt return for a touchdown in as many weeks. Well, almost to the end zone. A replay showed Mathieu flipped the ball to an official just before he crossed the goal line, but no one on the field caught the blunder.

"Yeah, I kind of felt it," Mathieu said. "I looked at the referee. I'll have to remember not to do that next time."

That was long forgotten by the time the fearless sophomore was done.

"I just tried to make one guy miss and then get to the end zone," Mathieu said.

On Georgia's first possession of the second half, quarterback Aaron Murray tried to scramble for a first down but had the ball knocked loose just before he hit the turf. Who was there to fall on it at the Bulldogs 26?

Mathieu, of course, his fifth fumble recovery of the season.

LSU quickly seized its first lead. The Tigers finally picked up a first down, then freshman Kenny Hilliard broke off a 15-yard run for the first of his three touchdowns. Normally, that would've been more than enough to win the game's MVP award. Not even close on this day.

Mathieu, whose nickname comes from a humorous YouTube video about supposedly the world's more fearless animal ("Honey Badger don't care, he just takes what he wants," the narrator says), dropped back to receive another punt. About the only thing the Bulldogs managed to do was keep him out of the end zone.

The 5-foot-9, 175-pounder cradled the ball, took off down the center of the field, cut back to his left, stutter-stepped and turned on a burst of speed, basically came to a stop around the Georgia 30, then took off again and was finally dragged down at the 17.

He avoided or broke away from at least eight of the 11 red-clad guys trying to bring him down, a Heisman-worthy play that should be enough to at least get him to New York for the banquet ? if not earn him serious consideration for the award as the nation's top player. Certainly, no defensive player has come up with more big plays.

"When you play as hard as he does, good things happen to you," Georgia coach Mark Richt said. "To be honest with you, I enjoy watching him play football except when he plays against us. When you see a guy like that, you appreciate the way he plays. There's just something about him. He finds a way to do something special just about every game. He did it again today."

Mathieu has scored four touchdowns this season: Two on returns, two more from his cornerback spot. He's forced six fumbles. He's picked off two passes. He one of the top tacklers on one of the nation's top defenses.

LSU took control with a 21-point third quarter, coming back from a double-digit deficit for the second week in a row and leaving little doubt that it's the best team in country heading into bowl season. The only other unbeaten team, Houston, was blown out in the Conference USA championship game Saturday. All the other top teams have at least one loss.

If there was ever a year when no playoff was needed, it's this one. The Tigers have knocked off five teams in The Associated Press' current Top 25 ? including three of the top eight. They'll still have to win one more game to claim the BCS title, but a case can be made that they deserve to be voted No. 1 in the AP poll, no matter what happens Jan. 9 in the Big Easy.

SEC East champion Georgia came into the game on a 10-game winning streak, and the Bulldogs showed no fear of LSU in the early going. Murray connected with Tavarres King on a 44-yard pass and could've had a TD when a pass across the middle went through King's hands. They settled for Blair Walsh's 40-yard field goal.

Knowing he would have to throw caution to the wind to pull off the upset against a 13 1/2-point favorite, Richt called an onside kick. It worked the perfection, Walsh bouncing the ball off the turf and high into the air. Alec Ogletree soared in to grab the ball beyond the necessary 10 yards, giving the Bulldogs another possession.

They should've scored a touchdown. Instead, they wound up with nothing. Freshman Malcolm Mitchell dropped a pass right in his hands at the LSU 5 with no one around, and Walsh missed a 45-yard try.

But LSU couldn't do anything with the ball. The Tigers' longest play in the first half was 9 yards. Eleven of their 21 plays went for zero or negative yards. Outside of Mathieu, punter Brad Wing was LSU's best field-turning weapon, averaging 54.1 yards on his first seven punts.

Both offenses stalled in the second quarter, managing a grand total of 2 yards ? 1 for each team. Georgia went to the locker room with a commanding 135-12 lead in total yards, but certainly a sense it had missed its chance to put away an LSU team that had outscored No. 6 Arkansas 41-3 after falling into an early 14-0 hole the previous week.

Hilliard scored on a 4-yard run after Mathieu's second big return to make it 21-10, essentially enough to finish off the Bulldogs, but he then hauled in a 8-yard touchdown pass.

The Tigers romped in the final period. Alfred Blue broke off a 48-yard touchdown run and Morris Claiborne returned an interception 45 yards for the final score. LSU won even though Jordan Jefferson completed only five passes and the offense totaled a mere 237 yards.

Murray had a miserable day, completing just 16 of 40 for 163 yards with two interceptions. Georgia's running game was non-existent with Isaiah Crowell hobbling on a sore ankle. The freshman had only 15 yards on 10 carries.

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111204/ap_on_sp_co_ga_su/fbc_t25_sec_championship

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Black Friday good for some retailers, not for all

Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images

People rush into the entrance of Macy's department store as they open at midnight on Nov. 25, 2011 in New York to begin the "Black Friday" shopping weekend. Retailers showed mixed results in November.

By Jessica Wohl, Reuters

Retailers that stuck with their same old holiday season strategies were dealt a blow in November, while earlier hours and bigger promotions were the keys to success for other chains.

Overall, November sales at stores open at least a year rose as they were expected, although there were clear winners and losers during a critical month for the retail industry.

Retailers rolled out midnight door-buster sales after Thanksgiving, free shipping for online orders and other special deals to entice those shoppers who may have been reluctant in the face of economic pressure.

Such tactics paid off for chains such as Macy's Inc and Saks Inc. Meanwhile, Kohl's Corp and J.C. Penney Co Inc were among the few that flopped.

"It's definitely a mixed bag," said Matt Arnold, a consumer analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis. "It almost seems like the chains that were catering to a higher-income consumer seemed to be more the winners and more discount-oriented chains, in many instances, got off to a weaker start."

Kohl's 6.2 percent drop in same-store sales was the steepest decline among retailers and missed analysts' expectations by the widest margin. Its shares fell 6 percent.

Penney said its decision to open at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, rather than opening at midnight as Macy's, Kohl's and others did, hurt its performance on that day and sales in its stores remained soft throughout the holiday weekend. However, traffic on its website was strong over the weekend, but those sales will not be reported until the company's December tally.

The 20 chains that had reported monthly same-store sales as of Thursday morning posted an average increase of 3.1 percent, according to Thomson Reuters. In November 2010, such sales jumped 5.5 percent.

The tally provides just a glimpse into total spending, as major chains that do brisk holiday business, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Best Buy Co Inc, do not issue monthly reports.

?

Promotions rule
Retailers now must do what they can to see profitable gains for the rest of the holiday season -- a difficult task as many industry watchers expect that shoppers under financial stress will hold back after their weekend binge.

"Clearly, retailers bent over backwards to juice sales up for the holiday weekend," said Kurt Salmon retail strategist John Long.

He plans to closely watch traffic at stores this weekend to see if Black Friday was a sustainable trend for the season or just an anomaly.

Macy's shares rose to their highest level since October 2007 after the chain said quarterly same-store sales could surpass its expectations if November's trends continue.

Meanwhile, weaker-than-expected same-store sales at Target Corp and Gap Inc showed that shoppers remained selective.

"The consumer has become insanely focused on promotions," said David Bassuk, head of the global retail practice at AlixPartners. "The consumer is willing to spend money, that's the good news. But consumers needs to be convinced."

Gap's discounts were not as aggressive as analysts said they wanted to see.

"This is just the start of the holiday selling season and we expect December to remain fiercely competitive and highly promotional," said Glenn Murphy, chairman and chief executive officer of Gap.

Over at Target, people who bought did spend more, but fewer came out to make purchases. Toys, music and movies were among the worst performing categories, it said. Target said it expects a "competitive and promotional environment" to persist in December with the main focus still on value.

Women's clothing retailer Talbots Inc also expects a challenging and promotional holiday season. Its shares tumbled after it posted a deeper-than-anticipated quarterly loss.

Total retail sales for the weekend reached an estimated $52.4 billion, up from $45 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation, which expects full holiday season sales to rise 2.8 percent.

Michael Niemira, chief economist of the International Council of Shopping Centers, said a same-store sales gain of 3.2 percent in November came in slightly below his expectations of 3.5 percent to 4 percent. The ICSC expects December will be stronger, with same-store sales up 3.5 percent to 4 percent.

Analysts cautioned that investors need to look at the full holiday season, not just Black Friday weekend.

"Until the entire holiday season is over there is really no verdict that you can render," said Edward Jones' Arnold.

Sales growth at Buckle Inc, which caters to teens with jeans and other apparel, was stronger than expected.

Wet Seal Inc's same-store sales fell less than analysts expected. The women's clothing retailer said merchandise margins at its namesake chain over the holiday weekend were "significantly improved," while over at the Arden B chain, it is carefully managing inventories as it tries to improve business.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/01/9140011-black-friday-good-for-some-retailers-not-for-all

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Digital face transplant for low-budget movies

Big-budget special effects could soon be within the grasp of low-budget film-makers thanks to a new technique for automatically replacing one actor's face with another's.

Face replacement is a much-used effect in Hollywood productions, even cropping up in realistic drama films such as The Social Network, in which two unrelated actors played a pair of twins. The complex and expensive equipment it requires, not to mention dedicated visual effects artists, have kept it out of low-budget movies, though.

No longer. "We achieve high-quality results with just a single camera and simple lighting set-up," says Kevin Dale, a computer scientist at Harvard University who came up with the new technique.

Dale and colleagues start a face "transplant" with an algorithm that creates 3D models of each face. Their system then automatically morphs the image of the donor's face to match the recipient, but that alone doesn't create a realistic-looking video ? a joining seam is visible. "One frame might look good, or many frames in sequence might look good individually, but when you play them together you get flickering," explains Dale.

So his system calculates the position on both actors' faces where the seam will be as unobtrusive as possible. It also ensures that it doesn't jump around from frame to frame to avoid flickering. The whole process takes about 20 minutes to produce a 10-second video on an ordinary desktop computer and requires only a little manual interaction. Users can place facial markers on the first frame to generate the 3D facial model, but in some cases the system "worked right out of the box", says Dale.

Hybrid performances

In addition to performing face transplants, Dale says directors could also use his system to blend multiple versions of an actor's performance into a single scene. It can combine the mouth from one take with the eyes from another, for example, because it can match slight differences in movement between two videos. It can't handle every situation, however, and videos with complex or very different lighting won't match up well.

"It's a step towards making this more automatic," says Paul Debevec, a computer graphics researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, whose work has been used in films such as The Matrix and Avatar. He says that Dale's technique is unlikely to be used by film industry professionals, who can already achieve the same effect, but it could be made into a YouTube plug-in or a similar easy-to-use tool. He warns that people may struggle to match lighting between videos made at home, though.

Journal reference: ACM Transactions on Graphics, DOI: 10.1145/2070781.2024164

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Andre Coe, AP editorial assistant in Dallas, dies (AP)

DALLAS ? Andre Coe, a former editorial assistant in the Dallas bureau of The Associated Press and the cooperative's regional news desk in Phoenix, died Friday. He was 36.

During his career at the AP, Coe reported from the Texas Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008, and was one of the first reporters to arrive at the scene of a bus crash that killed 17 passengers in Sherman earlier that year. He wrote about the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the return of U.S. Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who successfully landed a passenger jet in the Hudson River in 1999, to his hometown of Denison.

"Andre would appear in our cramped newsroom after a long day out in the wet heat of a summer disturbed by Ike, drop a backpack heavy with gear, and inquire about our story," said David Scott, the AP's Central Regional editor. "Invariably, it was a story for which he'd again earned the byline, having dictated throughout the day the details and interviews that made it work."

Coe had just started working as an editorial assistant at the AP's West Regional desk in 2010 when he was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer.

"Andre was an inspiration to everyone he met," said Dale Leach, AP's Chief of Bureau for Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. "Even when his body was failing, his spirit remained hopeful and uplifting. We will miss his presence, but always remember his spirit."

Coe was born in Fort Worth and grew up in Abilene. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in sociology in 2000 and returned to the school to earn a second degree in journalism in 2003.

Before coming to the AP, Coe was a reporter at the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and the Dallas Examiner. He also had interned at the Austin American-Statesman and the Abilene Reporter-News.

"He said his biggest accomplishment was being a journalist, working where he could tell other people's stories," said Kim Bogney, one of Coe's three siblings.

He was a member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, where his nickname was Aries, for his warrior spirit, she said. Coe was an ROTC cadet and also a huge sports fan.

While battling his illness, Coe would often visit his colleagues and joke about the weight and hair he lost during his treatment for cancer. He was a constant upbeat presence on Facebook.

"He remained happy, joyful and positive even while being fully cognizant of what he was facing and he truly inspired everyone who knew him during that period because he fought that battle joyfully," said Matt Curry, a reporter in the AP's Dallas bureau, who became good friends with Coe as they worked together at night.

While Coe was ill, he wrote a book of humorous stories about his life titled "The Life and Times of a Curly Headed Kid from West Texas."

"Andre was very carefree," Bogney said. "He lived his life. He didn't leave anything on the table."

Coe is survived by his mother, Irene Coe of Abilene; two sisters, Vickie Hall of Plano and Kim Bogney of Allen; and a brother, Anthony Coe of Round Rock. Funeral services are pending.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_coe

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Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops

Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! We're well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties surrounding the seasonal shopping experience, so we're here to help you sort out this year's tech treasures. Below is today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.

Let's get this out of the way: a laptop is an intimate gift. Even if you were to get away with paying just $400, it's a lot to spend on even your spouse (ten years is the netbook anniversary, right?). Not to mention, your lucky giftee will be spending more time with it, perhaps, than they do their friends, families and pets. At the same time, the selection is nothing if not overwhelming, and if you were to make a spreadsheet tallying prices and specs, you'd notice an uncomfortable similarity across different brands. So, we rounded up some of the best we've seen -- everything from all-purpose notebooks to Ultrabooks to high-end dream machines. If you're thinking of pulling the trigger, hop past the break for a few ideas and the (very brief) low-down on the trade-offs you'll be making.

Continue reading Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops

Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/engadgets-holiday-gift-guide-2011-laptops/

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