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Friday, April 19, 2013
Strophes: The Beautiful Lyrics Reader Is Finally Mobile
Monday, April 8, 2013
To crack human brain's code, a search for visionaries
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To crack the code of the human brain, Cori Bargmann figures it's best to keep an open mind.
As one of two leaders of a scientific "dream team" in the initial phase of President Barack Obama's ambitious $100 million project to map the brain, Bargmann said the first step is to find the right combination of people to set research priorities.
"You might start with people who are very senior and are household words in their fields, and then you may realize that what (you) actually need is the young Turk who's a visionary wild man," Bargmann said.
Bargmann, a neurobiologist at The Rockefeller University in New York, and William Newsome, a neurobiologist at Stanford Medical School in California, are the co-chairs of a committee announced by the White House on Tuesday for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative. That long title has been dubbed BRAIN for short.
Both Newsome and Bargmann are at the top of the neurobiology pyramid, professors at premiere institutions, winners of dozens of scientific honors and awards, authors of research papers in prestigious journals. As Newsome noted wryly, "I don't need this aggravation, to some extent, but I think this is really important."
Bargmann, who recalls watching the first Apollo moon landing in 1969 as an 8-year-old, this year won a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for her work on the genetics of neural circuits and behavior and synaptic guidepost molecules.
This project was something no scientist, so far, has turned down.
"If there's going to be a program to try to do something significant and the taxpayer's going to be involved in it, you make the time to try to help," she said. "As far as I know, everyone who was asked to help said yes."
The BRAIN effort isn't quite like any other, Bargmann said. Even the Human Genome Project had a more focused goal at the start: to determine the precise sequence of chemical "letters" that constitute the full complement of human DNA.
In contrast, before BRAIN tries to solve a single mystery of the human mind, it will build the scientific infrastructure to be able to ask the right questions. Like the U.S. space program in the 1960s, she said, BRAIN could get the public excited about science in a way that other research has not.
"I believe that brain science will be to the 21st century what quantum physics and DNA molecular biology were to the 20th century," Newsome said.
The ultimate goal is to decode brain activity to help researchers understand complex ailments ranging from traumatic brain injury to schizophrenia to Alzheimer's disease, which cost Americans $500 billion annually, according to Francis Collins, the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, who picked Newsome and Bargmann for the job.
The program would initially be funded with $100 million called for in the president's fiscal 2014 budget, set for release on Wednesday, which is subject to approval by Congress. That sum would be divided among the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation, with partners from the private sector.
Bargmann found it refreshing that Obama said the project would provide tools for understanding Alzheimer's and psychiatric disease, but he did not promise cures. "It isn't promising too much," she said.
SWITCHING BRAIN CELLS ON AND OFF
She was also encouraged by support from two prominent Republicans: House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Newt Gingrich, former presidential candidate and former House speaker, who credited Obama for taking "a very important step toward the most dramatic breakthroughs in human health."
The Democratic president does not often get such enthusiasm from his Republican opponents.
Fast-developing technology makes this "a unique moment in time" to make this inquiry, Newsome said.
"I think the brain is the most mysterious and complex entity in the universe," he said by telephone. "And I think that new technologies that have developed within the last five years give us a shot at cracking open the problem of the brain in ways that previous generations of scientists never dreamed."
One of these technologies, Newsome said, is optogenetics, which uses genetic engineering to make certain nerve cells in the brain sensitive to different kinds of light, exciting or inhibiting these cells depending on the light's wavelength.
That means scientists can artificially switch the brain's circuits on or off during behavior to see how they contribute to essential functions like vision, learning and decision-making, Newsome said.
The other technological leap of the last decade has been the ability to record the electrical activity of hundreds or even thousands of neurons, a big improvement over the previous requirement of studying one neuron at a time. Since the human brain is composed of some 100 billion neurons - nerve cells that pulse with electrochemical signals - the one-at-a-time approach slowed research to a crawl.
It's not just the number of neurons, but seeing how these billions of neurons interact with each other that could make a map of the brain a reality.
That map is likely to be less like an atlas on paper and more like an online traffic video, Bargmann said, "because the brain is never the same in any two people, and it's not the same in one person at two different times."
Both Bargmann and Newsome are working in their own laboratories on pieces of this puzzle. Newsome focuses on the brain's way of mediating visual perception and visually guided behavior (see his lab's site at monkeybiz.stanford.edu ).
Bargmann's research aims to tackle a big subject - how environment and genes interact to shape human behavior - by looking at the relatively simple neurological system of a worm. (see lab.rockefeller.edu/bargmann/ )
(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Vicki Allen)
Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/lZfakPovUL4/story01.htm
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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Pope urges Church to ?act with determination in cases of sexual abuse?
Pope Francis
Image: Alessandra Tarantino/AP/Press Association Images
POPE FRANCIS HAS given his first pronouncement on the Catholic Church?s pervasive paedophile priest scandal, urging Vatican disciplinarians to act ?with determination? against the scourge.
Meeting with Monsignor Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the head of the Vatican department that disciplines predator priests, the?pope?asked him to ?act with determination in cases of sexual abuse,? the Vatican said in a statement.
It was the first official word on the issue from the?pope, who was elected March 13 to succeed Benedict XVI, whose papacy was marred by relentless paedophilia scandals with tens of thousands of victims over several decades.
The statement noted that the policy followed ?the line established? by Benedict XVI, who was the first?pope?to apologise to victims and called for zero tolerance against sexual abuse by priests.
The Argentine?pope?asked for ?stepped-up measures to protect minors and help those who were subjected to such violence in the past?.
Also in line with his predecessor, Francis reminded the heads of national Catholic churches around the world that they had committed to formulating and implementing directives for addressing the problem ? including turning abusers over to local law enforcement.
Mueller?s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in May 2011 a document ordering bishops to turn in members of the clergy suspected of paedophilia and to prevent them from working in settings involving minors.
It gave the bishops? conferences (national churches) one year to come up with guidelines on combating the crimes and cooperating with police.
600 claims of abuse every year
As of September 2012, three-quarters of the national churches had complied, according to Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican ?prosecutor? in sex abuse cases.
The scourge of abusive priests burst into the spotlight more than a decade ago with a cascade of scandals rocking the Church worldwide, from Ireland to the United States, from Australia to Benedict?s native Germany.
The Vatican says it continues to receive around 600 claims against abusive priests every year, many of them dating back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Sexual abuse by priests has often been coupled with cover-ups by their superiors, typically by transferring them to other parishes.
In Latin America, Francis?s home region, the most notorious scandal concerned the Mexican founder of the conservative Legionnaires of Christ congregation, Marcial Maciel, who was accused of sexually abusing children before he died in 2008.
SNAP, a vocal support group for victims, reacted immediately to Friday?s statement, demanding that the?pope?match words with actions.
?We can?t confuse words with actions,? said the Survivors? Network for those Abused by Priests.
?Kids won?t be helped by a ?continuation? of the tiny symbolic gestures taken by?Pope?Benedict,? it said. ?Kids will be helped by decisive changes. Thus far,?Pope?Francis hasn?t even discussed, much less adopted, even a single reform.?
SNAP, which has asked the International Criminal Court to prosecute Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity, has demanded that the Church publish the names of predator priests on the Internet.
-?? AFP 2013
Read:?Pope prays for peace in Syria, Korea on first Easter
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Source: http://www.thejournal.ie/pope-francis-church-sex-abuse-scandal-859318-Apr2013/
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Warner criticizes military's delay in testing drinking water
WVEC.com
Posted on April 4, 2013 at 4:13 PM
WASHINGTON--Sen. Mark Warner is questioning the military's safeguards against lead in drinking water at its facilities.
Warner's comments came after unsafe levels of lead in drinking water were found at two Navy child care centers in Hampton Roads last week.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Warner raised concerns over the apparent five-year delay between an Oct. 2007 Pentagon mandate to test lead in drinking water fixtures and the initiation of testing at Hampton Roads facilities in October 2012 saying, "This is not acceptable."
According to Warner's office, the senator asked Hagel for assurance that everything possible was being done to protect military families from elevated levels of lead. Warner urged Hagel to confirm that appropriate testing has occurred at other military facilities across all branches of the military.
During routine testing of nearly 300 water outlets at nine centers, the Navy discovered elevated levels at a center outside Naval Station Norfolk on Hampton Boulevard and at the Fort Story side of Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.
The voluntary EPA standards recommends a lead level of no higher than 20 parts per billion, which is said to be equivalent to 20 eye drops in an Olympics-sized pool. The testing showed a highest level of 66 parts per billion.
Lead exposure has been found to cause serious medical issues including permanent damage to the brain and nervous system, which can result in behavioral and learning problems.
Following the discovery of elevated lead levels last week, the Navy said installation commanding officers, day care center management, environmental and health specialists were available to meet individually with parents and employees to provide results of the tests and have their questions and concerns addressed.
Warner praised the, "aggressive and proactive response by the Hampton Roads Navy command following last week?s reports."?
Click here to read a copy of the letter from Sen. Warner to Secretary Hagel.
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Why was March so cold? Blame Greenland.
You're not imagining it: March 2013 was chilly ? the second-coldest March since 2000. The culprit is a stubborn mass of warm air over Greenland that blocked the jet stream.
This NOAA satellite image taken March 28 shows the stationary air mass over Greenland and the North Atlantic that kept March so chilly for most of the continental US.
Weather Underground / AP
EnlargeAlthough spring has arrived, it may not feel that way for many in the United States and Canada who have had to put up with unusually cold temperatures.
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Last month was a chilly one, ranking as the second-coldest March in the continental United States since 2000, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The average temperature across the United States this March was also 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 degrees Celsius) lower than in March 2012, and a late-winter blizzard broke snowfall records in many areas.
So, why has it been so cold?
The culprit is a stubborn, stationary mass of warm air over Greenland and the North Atlantic that has blocked the normal flow of air from west to east and south to north, said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the NWS' Storm Prediction Center. This flow of air, known as the jet stream, usually brings more warm air from the South as the Northern Hemisphere begins to heat up in the spring.
Obstinate air masses
This March, however, the mass of warm air ? a high-pressure system that repels incoming weather systems ? has redirected air currents and created a pattern of winds coming from the Northwest, blasting the eastern two-thirds of the United States with Arctic air, Carbin said.
"This obstinate mass of warm air over Greenland has redirected air currents like a rock in a stream," Carbin said.
However, the spring season hasn't been cold everywhere. In fact, the southwestern United States has been warmer than average, as the region has been unaffected by the blocking system in the North Atlantic, said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and science writer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Due, in part, to the cold, there have been fewer than 20 tornadoes in the United States this March, Carbin said. On average, March will see 76 twisters across the United States. Tornadoes depend on warm, moist air, which was scarce this past March, Carbin added.?
Climate change?
Some research has suggested a link between a retreat of Arctic sea ice in a warming world and these high-pressure blocking systems, Carbin said.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/HgNeTN30RiQ/Why-was-March-so-cold-Blame-Greenland
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Thursday, April 4, 2013
Video Gets Social With New Streaming Service From Rdio
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/eMjCn-0CzKQ/
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US is halfway to Obama 5-year export-doubling goal
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Suddenly outsourcing is on the way out and insourcing on the way in as the U.S. trudges unevenly toward President Barack Obama's goal of doubling American exports around the world by the start of 2015.
So far, export levels are about halfway to his mark.
Obama set the five-year target in his January 2010 State of the Union address and recently has hastened his drumbeat, telling his export advisory council last month the nation was "well on our way" to his goal. "The question now becomes: How do we sustain this momentum?"
While economists and industry leaders generally expect the ambitious target to be missed, impressive gains already booked in American manufacturing and exporting suggest such a miss may not be by that much.
Why the optimism toward a manufacturing comeback? Here are five reasons:
? Cheap U.S. natural gas and other increased energy production are helping to power U.S. factories more efficiently, with gas especially providing inexpensive raw materials for U.S. manufacturers of plastics, tires, certain pharmaceuticals and other petrochemical products.
? Higher wages in China and other foreign export markets are making outsourcing less profitable to U.S. firms.
? Congressional approval in 2011 of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and other agreements being negotiated now with Asia and Europe are promising to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.
? High U.S. unemployment is relieving pressure on factory owners to increase wages, helping to make U.S. labor costs more globally competitive.
? Major technology advances have steadily boosted factory efficiency and worker productivity.
Yet while many industries are doing more with fewer workers, more than half a million new manufacturing jobs have been added in just the past few years.
Of course, some big bumps lie in the road. Europe is mired in recession, the American economy continues to expand at a snail's pace and the jobless rate sits at a stubbornly high 7.7 percent almost four years after the 2007-09 recession ended.
Obama's starting point was 2009 exports of $1.57 trillion. Since then, they've climbed to a record $2.19 trillion in 2012 ? about 48 percent toward his goal of some $3.14 trillion a year by the start of 2015.
But 2012 exports, while a record, grew just 5.5 percent from those in 2011, down from a 15.9 percent surge from 2010 to 2011. The rate would have to pick up sharply again this year and next to meet Obama's target.
"Some of the headwinds we faced last year have started to improve," said Chad Moutay, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers. "And I think energy is a game-changer. We definitely have increased the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing."
U.S. manufacturers posted a fourth consecutive month of expansion in March. While the rate was a bit below February's gain, the overall trend is still up.
Some critics argue that Obama set the bar artificially low by using recessionary 2009 numbers as his starting point.
Alan Tonelson, an official with the U.S. Business and Industry Council, said Obama also "has the wrong goal" by focusing on exports and not the other part of the trade equation: still-huge import levels and resulting trade deficits.
The U.S. imported $540.4 billion more in goods and services last year than it exported, down only slightly from the $559.9 billion trade deficit in 2011.
"We racked up a pretty impressive export performance over the last few years. But the main reason that we may not reach the Obama doubling-export goal is the world economy is slowing down," said Tonelson, whose organization represents nearly 2,000 mainly family-owned U.S. manufacturing companies.
Obama shrugs off such skepticism, suggesting the recent manufacturing gains speak for themselves.
"What's happening here is happening all around the country," the president said during a recent visit to a flourishing engine-part factory in Ashville, N.C. "Just as it's becoming more and more expensive to do business in places like China, America is getting more competitive."
Federal legislative "Buy America" restrictions on certain recent government contracts? considered protectionist by many economists ? are also being credited with helping to spur some recent U.S. manufacturing gains.
The U.S. now makes about 18 percent of the world's goods, down from nearly 40 percent right after World War II. Clearly, many manufacturing jobs will never come back.
"The U.S. had manufacturing trade surpluses until around 1980 (but) has run big deficits since then," said Martin Baily, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and co-author of a new Brookings study of U.S. manufacturing.
The study showed that high trade deficits, especially with China, and high U.S. business tax rates are combining to keep U.S. manufacturing from rebounding more strongly.
Manufacturing "still remains a very important sector and one that I think we need to foster and that needs to flourish," Baily said. "So we need to expand manufacturing in order to reduce that trade deficit. We can't just do it on services alone."
Republicans have long clamored for lower corporate tax rates to stimulate business growth. At a nominal top rate of 35 percent, the U.S. has the highest corporate tax of the world's industrialized nations.
While few U.S. companies actually pay the full rate due to various deductions and credits, U.S. tax bites dissuade foreign companies from setting up shop here while providing incentives to U.S. multinational companies to keep large sums overseas, Republicans argue.
Obama largely agrees and has proposed lowering the top rate to 25 percent for manufacturers, even lower rates on income from still-undefined "advanced manufacturing" and 28 percent for all other corporations.
Laura D. Tyson, who was President Bill Clinton's chief national economic adviser and served on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said there are big barriers to getting a significant reduction in corporate rates. Among them: "The country desperately needs more tax revenues" and "there are huge vested interests" to protect existing loopholes, she said.
"At the end, I would like to get rid of the corporate tax," Tyson said. "That's probably not going to happen."
___
Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-halfway-obama-5-export-065157609.html
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
LG Jukeblox hits the FCC, makes us wonder what a Jukeblox is
Once in every while, a product meanders through the FCC that we've actually never heard of. Today we found a test report concerning LG's Jukeblox, a "networked media module" that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else on the internet. The report details that the unit has an 802.11 b/g WiFi module, but no hints as to its intended purpose or destination. At a guess, we'd posit that the device is destined to rival the AllShare Cast, but given that "Jukeblox" is also the name of SMSC's digital audio technology, LG might have to deal with some trademark wrangling before this product sees the light of day.
Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wireless, LG
Source: FCC
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/03/lg-jukeblox-fcc/
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'DWTS' Results: Wynonna Judd Eliminated After Week 3
The "DWTS" results are in and Wynonna Judd is out.
Lisa Vanderpump and Gleb Savchenko were the first in the Bottom 3, followed by Andy Dick and Sharna Burgess, and Wynonna and her partner Tony Dovolani were the final couple in jeopardy.
"I faced some of my biggest fears," Judd said before saying goodbye to "DWTS." "This is the hardest job I've ever had ... I did the best I could."
Judd is the first contestant to be eliminated from Season 16 of "Dancing With The Stars" since Dorothy Hamill withdrew from the competition due to an injury in the first "DWTS" results week.
Zendaya and Jacoby Jones won the Prom Queen and King titles, thanks to the "DWTS" audience. That put Zendaya and her partner Val Chmerkovskiy, and Jacoby and his partner Karina Smirnoff, through to Week 4. At the end of the night, when the "DWTS" results were in, Zendaya gave her Prom Queen sash to Wynonna.
Unsurprisingly, Kellie Pickler and her partner Derek Hough were also safe after topping the leaderboard and, despite having some of the lowest scores of the week and some very harsh criticism from the judges, D. L. Hughley and his partner Cheryl Burke were also revealed to be moving on. Sean Lowe and Peta Murgatroyd, Victor Ortiz and Lindsay Arnold, Ingo Rademacher and Kym Johnson, and Aly Raisman and Mark Ballas were also safe for Week 4 on "DWTS."
Do you agree with this week's "DWTS" results? Sound off in the comments!
"Dancing With The Stars" airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET and Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/dwts-results-wynonna-judd-eliminated_n_3003060.html
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US Restraint in Syria Could Aid Nuke Talks
President Barack Obama's reluctance to give military aid to Syrian rebels may be explained, in part, in three words: Iranian nuclear weapons.
For the first time in years, the United States has seen a glimmer of hope in persuading Iran to curb its nuclear enrichment program so it cannot quickly or easily make an atomic bomb. Negotiations resume this week in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where encouraging talks in February between six world powers and the Islamic Republic ended in what Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili called a "turning point" after multiple thwarted steps toward a breakthrough.
But Tehran is unlikely to bend to Washington's will on its nuclear program if it is fighting American-supplied rebels at the same time in Syria. Tehran is Syrian President Bashar Assad's chief backer in the two-year civil war that, by U.N. estimates, has left at least 70,000 people dead. Iranian forces are believed to be fighting alongside the regime's army in Syria, and a senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard force was killed outside Damascus in February.
Russia also is supplying Assad's forces with arms. And the U.S. does not want to risk alienating Russia, one of the six negotiating nations also seeking to limit Iran's nuclear program, by entering what would amount to a proxy war in Syria.
The White House has at least for now put the nuclear negotiations ahead of intervening in Syria, according to diplomats, former Obama administration officials and experts. Opposition forces in Syria are in disarray and commanded in some areas by a jihadist group linked to al-Qaida. Preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb remains a top priority for the Obama administration, which has been bent on ending wars ? not opening new military fronts.
"I think that the United States has not taken a more active role in Syria from the beginning because they didn't want to disturb the possibility, to give them space, to negotiate with Iran," Javier Solana, the former European Union foreign policy chief, said Monday at a Brookings Institution discussion about this week's talks. Solana, who was a top negotiator with Tehran in the nuclear program until 2009, added, "They probably knew that getting very engaged against Assad, engaged even militarily, could contribute to a break in the potential negotiations with Tehran."
Solana also warned of frostier relations between Moscow and Washington that could scuttle success in both areas. "With Russia, we need to be much more engaged in order to resolve the Syrian problem and, at the end, the question of Tehran," he said.
Adding to the mix is the unpredictable relationship between the U.S. and China, which has been leery of harsh Western sanctions on Iran and is expected to follow Russia's lead on the nuclear negotiations. Without Russia and China's support, experts say, the West will have little success in reaching a compromise with Iran.
"Resolving the nuclear impasse with Iran is the biggest challenge this year in the Middle East, and that requires careful handling of not only Iran, but Russia and China," said retired Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, who followed the negotiations closely as the top U.S. envoy to Baghdad last year. "Decisions on Syria and other international questions certainly will be taken in this context."
The White House refused comment, and a senior State Department official played down a direct linkage between the two national security priorities.
The negotiations have indirect, if wide-reaching, links to regional affairs that include Syria but also go beyond, including the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, Washington's uneasy detente with Baghdad and Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal ? the only one of its kind in the Mideast. Iran has often said it wants to use the nuclear talks as a possible springboard for other negotiations on regional issues, such as its call for a nuclear-free Middle East ? Tehran's way of trying to push for more international accountability on Israel's nuclear program.
Off-and-on talks between Iran and the world powers ? the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, known as P5+1 ? began after the six nations offered Tehran a series of incentives in 2006 in exchange for a commitment to stop uranium enrichment and other activities that could be used to make weapons. Iran long has maintained that it is enriching uranium only to make reactor fuel and medical isotopes, and insists it has a right to do so under international law. Last summer, the U.S. and E.U. hit Iran's economy and oil industry with tough sanctions to force it to comply.
But Iran has continued its program despite the sanctions. In February, in an attempt to move flagging negotiations forward, the world powers offered broader concessions to Iran, including letting it keep a limited amount of enriched uranium and suspend ? but not fully close ? a bunker-like nuclear facility near the holy city Qom. The world powers' offer, which also included removing some of the Western sanctions, was hailed by Iran as an important step forward in the process.
Few expect any major breakthroughs in the negotiations beginning this week until after Iran's presidential election in June.
Meanwhile, fighting in Syria has only intensified, and fears that Assad's forces used chemical weapons on rebel fighters in March brought the U.S. closer than ever to sending military aid to the opposition. Yet Obama has resisted pressures from foreign allies, Congress and his own advisers to arm the rebels or at least supply them with military equipment, or to use targeted airstrikes to destroy some of Assad's warplanes. The U.S. is helping train some former Syrian army soldiers ? mostly Sunni and tribal Bedouins ? in neighboring Jordan, which officials describe as non-lethal aid.
Part of Obama's reluctance, officials say, is the fear that U.S. weapons could end up in the hands of jihadists affiliated with al-Qaida. Of top concern is the Jabhat al-Nusra, a wing of the Islamic State of Iraq which, in turn, blames Iran for supporting the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
"Since we are now looking more at a pending regime collapse in Damascus that has a strong potential to turn it into a launch pad for transnational jihadism, Washington is more interested in a negotiated settlement, which involves talking to Iran," said Kamran Bokhari, a Toronto-based expert on Mideast issues for the global intelligence company Stratfor.
Obama has been firm in his belief that Assad must go, and has predicted it will happen sooner than later. But he has been equally adamant that Iran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons.
"A nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to the region, a threat to the world and potentially an existential threat to Israel," Obama said at a March 20 news conference in Jerusalem, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "And we agree on our goal. We do not have a policy of containment when it comes to a nuclear Iran."
Assad's fall would strip Iran of its closest ally in the volatile Mideast and perhaps spur the Islamic Republic to aggressively pursue a nuclear weapon as it faces further isolation. At the same time, it could encourage Tehran to make some modest concessions on nuclear talks to relieve pressure from the West, said Gary Samore, who in February left the White House as Obama's coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction and is now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"You can argue it either way, but in the end I think the collapse of Assad makes a nuclear deal more likely, because the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) will feel more isolated, under greater pressure, more likely to make tactical concessions in order to relieve further isolation and pressure," Samore said Monday. "Of course, that is not going to change his fundamental interest in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. I think it will confirm for him that the best way to defend himself against countries like the United States is to have that capacity."
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Associated Press writer Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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Lara Jakes has covered national security for The Associated Press since 2005 and is a former AP chief of bureau in Baghdad. Follow her on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/@larajakesAP
Also ReadSource: http://news.yahoo.com/us-restraint-syria-could-aid-iran-nuclear-talks-071018766.html
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