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BURLINGTON, Vt. ? A University of Vermont fraternity has been suspended while officials investigate allegations that it circulated a survey that asked members who they would like to rape.

Members of the Vermont chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon would not discuss the allegations.

University officials say the survey question was "incredibly offensive and inappropriate." They are investigating where the survey came from, who saw it and how it was used.

The national Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity says it has instructed the chapter to cease all operation, pending further investigation. It says that any behavior that demeans women is not tolerated.

School officials say a student reported the survey to the university over the weekend. The school says it contacted the national fraternity and campus police to determine if any crimes have been committed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111214/ap_on_re_us/us_fraternity_rape_survey

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TOKYO (Reuters) ? Sony Corp, set to report a $1 billion loss this year, is banking on a big slate of new software to drive sales of its new PlayStation Vita handheld games device, even as Fitch downgraded the Japanese electronics giant to a notch above junk.

Welshman Andrew House, who took the top job at Sony Computer Entertainment in September, must plot a much-needed success story for the Vita, negotiating a minefield of consumer gloom and competition from smartphones and tablet PCs such as Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad.

Sony, which has forecast a fourth straight annual loss this year, launches the Vita in Japan this weekend.

It hopes a package of 24 software titles at launch will help the gadget avoid the fate of rival Nintendo's 3DS, which flopped shortly after launch, forcing a hefty price cut.

"It's unprecedented for us to achieve that degree of publisher and development support ... we adopted a different approach to the lead-up to the platform in terms of our relationships with publishers and developers," House told reporters at Sony's Tokyo head office on Thursday.

He said he hoped the Vita would outsell its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable (PSP), which has shipped 73 million units since launching in late-2004.

The videogames unit made a first profit in 5 years in the year to March, as it squeezed production costs for the Playstation 3, boosting profits for the whole company. The unit's sales accounted for more than a tenth of Sony's 7 trillion yen in total revenue.

But costs involved in driving Vita sales may push the unit back into the red this year, adding to Sony's struggle with huge losses in televisions.

Sony needs the Vita to be a hit to ease the pain from its TV business, which is set for an annual loss of $2.2 billion, an eighth straight year of losses. Sony is looking to halve that loss next year, but has given few details on how it plans to get the business back into profit.

FITCH MOVE

The Fitch ratings agency turned up the heat by downgrading Sony to BBB- - a notch above non-investment, or junk, grade - from BBB, citing the group's weakened financial performance and the challenges it faces in recapturing its former strong position in key markets.

"A likely overall FY12 EBIT loss, excluding financial services, and an increase in debt driven by acquisitions will significantly weaken Sony's credit profile," said Nitin Soni, Associate Director in Fitch's Asia-Pacific Telecommunications, Media and Technology team.

Sony said in October it was taking over its mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson for $1.5 billion, and is also leading a group to buy EMI's music publishing operations in a deal valued at $2.2 billion.

"Of course, if the rating is downgraded it makes it more expensive for them to raise money, so it's not good," said Keita Wakabayashi, an analyst at Mito Securities.

"(Sony has) slashed its profit outlook for the current year and even if the North American market has improved slightly, European and Japanese markets and emerging markets are in a severe state. So downgrades are something we'll have to keep in mind."

VITA

The Vita, featuring a 5-inch OLED display and 3G connectivity, sold out in advance bookings in Japan, where buyers have rushed to upgrade from the PSP. Sony has not provided a unit sales target for the Vita.

The United States and Europe may pose a tougher challenge as a February 22 launch date for the Vita comes well after the crucial year-end holiday sales season.

"We've been told the PS Vita sold out on pre-bookings. How it sells next year depends on the software. If they can come up with something like Monster Hunter they will be able to sell a lot, but if they don't, prospects don't look so bright," said Mito's Wakabayashi, referring to a game title that drove sales of the PSP in Japan.

The challenge from smartphones and tablets comes on top of competition from long-standing domestic rival Nintendo, which aims to sell 16 million of its cheaper 3DS handheld games devices by March. Sony on Thursday said it was keeping to its target of selling 15 million PS3 game machines in the year through March.

Another rival, Microsoft, doesn't offer a portable device.

After a slump in sales, Nintendo slashed the price of its handheld gadget in August by about 40 percent to $170, compared with $249 for the PS Vita, or $299 for the 3G version.

The games industry has shrugged off the broader economic gloom and is forecast to top $81 billion by 2016, according to research firm DFC Intelligence, up 23 percent from this year and more than three times the size of the recorded music industry.

Much of that growth is likely to be in online, social and casual games, rather than the traditional hardware model that has been Sony's staple.

Japan's software houses are pouring resources into mobile social gaming, and industry executives have expressed some concern over the future for dedicated handheld gaming devices.

Sony was criticized in June, when it announced the pricing of the Vita, for making the gadget too expensive, and has teamed up with U.S. telecoms firm AT&T as Vita's exclusive carrier. Many U.S. iPhone users have complained that AT&T provided poor connectivity.

Sony shares closed down 1.5 percent on Thursday, their lowest in two weeks.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/tc_nm/us_sony_vita

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hoyecherryl03 · ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2011)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2011) ? A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside recently rediscovered the rarest species of bumblebee in the United States, last seen in 1956, living in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico.

Known as "Cockerell's Bumblebee," the bee was originally described in 1913 from six specimens collected along the Rio Ruidoso, with another 16 specimens collected near the town of Cloudcroft, and one more from Ruidoso, the most recent being in 1956. No other specimens had been recorded until three more were collected on weeds along a highway north of Cloudcroft on Aug. 31, 2011.

"Most bumblebees in the U.S. are known from dozens to thousands of specimens, but not this species," said Douglas Yanega, senior museum scientist at UC Riverside. "The area it occurs in is infrequently visited by entomologists, and the species has long been ignored because it was thought that it was not actually a genuine species, but only a regional color variant of another well-known species."

Yanega pointed out that there are nearly 50 species of native U.S. bumblebees, including a few on the verge of extinction, such as the species known as "Franklin's Bumblebee," which has been seen only once since 2003. That species, as rare as it is, is known from a distribution covering some 13,000 square miles, whereas Cockerell's Bumblebee is known from an area of less than 300 square miles, giving it the most limited range of any bumblebee species in the world.

"There is much concern lately about declines in our native bumblebee species, and as we now have tools at our disposal to assess their genetic makeup, these new specimens give fairly conclusive evidence that Cockerell's Bumblebee is a genuine species," he said. "With appropriate comparative research, we hope to be able to determine which other species is its closest living relative. Given that this bee occurs in an area that's largely composed of National Forest and Apache tribal land, it's unlikely to be under serious threat of habitat loss at the moment. Since its biology is completely unknown, however, it nevertheless may require some more formal assessment in the future."

Yanega went on to point out that it is not especially surprising for an insect species to be rediscovered after decades, when people might otherwise imagine that it may have gone extinct.

"When an insect species is very rare, or highly localized, it can fairly easily escape detection for very long periods of time," he said. "There are many precedents -- some of them very recently in the news, in fact -- of insects that have been unseen for anywhere from 70 to more than 100 years, suddenly turning up again when someone either got lucky enough, or persistent enough, to cross paths with them again. It is much harder to give conclusive evidence that an insect species has gone extinct than for something like a bird or mammal or plant."

UCR entomologists rediscover many such "lost" insect species and discover entirely new species on a regular basis, at the rate of several dozen species every year, primarily in groups such as bees, wasps, beetles, and plant bugs. According to recent estimates, approximately 8 million species are in existence, the vast majority being insects of which only about 1 million have been described.

"It should come as no surprise that we discover so many new species of insects so easily," Yanega said. "But the pace of species discovery and description is incredibly slow because there are so few insect taxonomists relative to the number of undescribed insects. Moreover, the work is painstaking, time-consuming, and not very glamorous, at least in the public's perception, when compared to studying things like dinosaurs."

As for plans regarding additional work with Cockerell's Bumblebee, Yanega said that the recent expedition, carried out together with UCR scientists Keve Ribardo and Greg Ballmer, was funded in part by the Friends of the Entomology Research Museum, a non-profit organization supporting UCR's Entomology Research Museum, but that nothing further was yet planned. The DNA sequencing was also carried out at UCR, as part of a larger study on wasp and bee relationships.

"The first step is to come to a firm conclusion regarding the status of this bee as a species," he said. "The second step is spreading the word to the scientific community that this bee deserves some attention, as it has been completely overlooked. Here at UCR we may or may not be involved beyond that point, in gathering data on the distribution and biology of this species, but at the very least our discovery can get the proverbial ball rolling."

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205140616.htm

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Former Raiders and Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden has been the subject of plenty of articles.? Most recently, he served as the subject of a comprehensive profile in The New Yorker.

It?s a lengthy article, and I actually read the whole thing.? Which means it?s good; otherwise, the adult ADD would have kicked in within the first few paragraphs.

Still, something was missing.

The article points out that Gruden routinely is ?criticized for overpraising players? publicly, but also points out that, in private settings, Gruden displays far less charity.

Writes Kelefa Sanneh of Gruden:? ?He is forever judging players who don?t or can?t excel ? ?slapdicks,? he calls them, or, more familiarly, ?slappies.?? A defensive lineman gets shoved back on his heels and collapses, too calmly, onto the turf.? ?He just looks like he?s enjoying this, getting blocked,? Gruden says.? Three receivers run malformed routes, and they all end up in the same throwing lane. ?That?s horrific,? Gruden says.? An offensive tackle dives halfheartedly at the feet of a defender, who leaps over him and knocks down the quarterback. ?I can?t take it,? Gruden says.?

So why the disconnect between the public and private persona?? ?His enthusiasm isn?t meant to fool the fans,? Sanneh writes, ?it?s meant to motivate and inspire them, as if they were players.?

Even if that isn?t a large chunk of baloney (and it probably is), the article overlooks the most prevalent theory regarding Gruden?s homage to Harvey Dent.? Many believe that Gruden fully intends to coach again, and that his ?everyone is the greatest? routine is aimed at ensuring that no bridges are burned, so that he?ll have maximum options ? and leverage ? when he decides to return.

It?s clear he?ll return.? ?I miss it a ton,? Gruden told Sanneh.? ?In some ways, I can?t believe I?m not a coach.?

And I can?t believe that a lengthy profile of Gruden was written without pointing out the possibility that his lack of authenticity in the broadcast booth flows from that desire to return to the sidelines under the best possible conditions.

Gruden was at it again on Monday night, chiding on-air partner Ron Jaworski for being ?the most negative guy I?ve ever met? after Jaws expressed an opinion that the Chargers won?t turn around their current 4-7 record.? Gruden then proceeded to apply his lips to the buttocks of Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, rattling off Rivers? record in the months of December and January and eventually encouraging him to tune out ?negative people? like Jaworski.

It makes sense.? With the Chargers reportedly poised to fire Norv Turner, there?s a chance that Gruden will be Rivers? next head coach.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/05/report-brett-favre-would-listen-if-the-bears-came-calling/related/

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