By Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Reuters, Dec. 5, 2013 (WITH VIDEO)

A suicide bomber and gunmen wearing army uniforms attacked Yemen's defense ministry on Thursday, killing 52 people including foreign medical staff, government sources said, in the country's worst militant assault in 18 months.

One attacker drove a car packed with explosives into the gate of the ministry's compound, then gunmen in another vehicle sped in and opened fire on soldiers and doctors and nurses working at a hospital inside, witnesses told Reuters.

The U.S. military raised its alert status in the region after the coordinated strikes on its ally, which is also home to what Washington has called the most active arm of al Qaeda.

The attack wounded 167 people [....]

95 YEARS OF AGE.

A SAINT HAS DIED!

‘'The simplest way to describe what I’m doing is building in silico simulations".

Already I’m wondering if I’m out of my depth. I’m talking to Sophie Kershaw, a new generation scientist in her twenties completing her doctoral thesis in computational biology at Oxford University. She specializes in cancer modeling. I’ve come to see her to try to make sense of the idea that science may have entered a new phase, one that may turn out to be as significant as the original Scientific Revolution in the Sixteenth Century. She’s enthusiastically explaining her research which involves building a virtual simulation environment for colorectal tissue, and I’m not sure I can keep up. Fortunately Sophie is used to explaining her work to non-scientists.

No doubt you've all seen this.

But...still...stunning good luck.

Love that the guy was the cook.

Sort of a latter day Ishmael, mutatis mutandis

Maps of neural circuitry show women's brains are suited to social skills and memory, men's perception and co-ordination

By Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian, 2 Dec. 2013

Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains.

Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions.

Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking [....]

By Arian Campo-Flores and Conor Dougherty, Wall Street Journal  ,Dec. 1, 2013

MIAMI—Cranes are again rising over this city, as the poster child for the real-estate collapse enjoys a new condominium boom fueled by foreign investors looking to park their money in U.S. real estate.

For several years after the housing bubble burst, a glut of towering condo buildings sat largely empty. Condo values plunged nearly 60% from peak to trough, according to the Miami Association of Realtors. Financing for buyers and developers dried up.

Now nearly all the once-vacant units are filled up, and demand is outstripping supply. There are 118 condo towers proposed in the Miami area, including 35 under construction, according to Condo Vultures LLC, a real-estate consultancy.

The 41 towers proposed for downtown will add 12,100 new units—well shy of the 22,200 units that were built during the 2003 to 2008 boom, but still a remarkable turnabout given that downtown construction was essentially dormant until 2011 [....]

Agence France Presse, Dec.2, 2013

DOHA: Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appealed on Monday to Saudi Arabia to work with Tehran toward achieving regional "stability", as he pressed a tour seeking rapprochement with Gulf Arab states. Zarif arrived in Doha after visits to Kuwait and Oman for meetings aimed at assuring top officials that a deal Iran secured with world powers on its disputed nuclear programme is in their interest.

During his stopover in the Omani capital Muscat, Zarif called on Saudi Arabia to jointly work with Iran to resolve regional issues.

"I believe that our relations with Saudi Arabia should expand as we consider Saudi Arabia as an extremely important country in the region and the Islamic world," Zarif told AFP on Monday. "We believe that Iran and Saudi Arabia should work together in order to promote peace and stability in the region." [....]

Also see:

Iranian foreign minister launches Gulf tour
By Behrouz Saeidi, Asharq Al-Awsat, 2 Dec, 2013

By Susan Donaldson James, ABC News, Nov. 30, 2013

James Fallon admits he has a lot in common with serial killer Ted Bundy and Columbine assassin Eric Harris. He is aggressive, lacks empathy and is a risk-taker.

Fallon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California Irvine, accidentally discovered what friends and family have suspected for years -- he has all the genetic traits and brain scan patterns of a psychopath.

"When somebody gets mad at me, I never show it -- they can't read it on my face," Fallon, 66, told ABCNews.com. "I never get even immediately, but four years down the road, I get them with revenge. I don't have special emotional bonds with those who are close to me -- I treat everyone the same," he said. "I am involved in a lot of charities and good works, and my intentions are good for the world. But I don't have the sense of romance or love I am supposed to have for my wife. It's not there."

But Fallon is not a mass murderer and in his new book, "The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain," he tries to understand why [....]

By Soumya Karlamangla, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2013

Prosecutors in Montana are going to the state’s highest court in hopes of securing a longer prison term for a former teacher who was given a month-long sentence for raping a 14-year-old girl.

Countries like Italy and Spain are turning away from the world, with grave consequences for the European project.
By Moisés Naím, TheAtlantic.com, Nov. 29, 2013

The collective mood of a nation mired in a prolonged economic recession shows many of the symptoms of clinical depression: despair, fatalism, an inability to make decisions, lack of motivation, and irritability. This is one of the impressions I got from a recent trip to Spain and Italy, two nations I know well and visit often. While both countries have recently made small strides on the path to recovery, I nevertheless came away with the strong sense that their economies are in recession and their societies are in depression. In the course of my travels, I also felt more than ever before that Europeans have fallen out of love with Europe—or, more precisely, with the idea of building a Europe-wide union.

Hopelessness and irascibility are present in spades in statements by politicians, activists, and opinion leaders, and in media reports on the mood of the  “people in the street.” Pessimism is the default attitude, and there is a notable paucity of the kinds of exciting ideas and proposals that energize society [....]

SOME CHALLENGES OF TODAY’S WORLD [52-75]

No to an economy of exclusion [53-54]
No to the new idolatry of money [55-56]
No to a financial system which rules rather than serves [57-58]
No to the inequality which spawns violence [59-60]
Some cultural challenges [61-67]
Challenges to inculturating the faith [68-70]
Challenges from urban cultures [71-75]