CHARLOTTE, N.C. Nearly half of American voters say they'll vote against Barack Obama no matter what.

That doesn't give the Democratic president much wiggle room as he tries to win re-election in a politically polarized America amid a weak recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

So, with the presidential contest up for grabs, what does Obama need to do at the Democratic National Convention to take a clear lead against Republican challenger Mitt Romney?

Here are five things that would make President Obama's week successful:

Take back the mantle of "strong leader"

Obama-bashers at the Republican National Convention scored some political points last week when they attacked the president's leadership skills, his ability (and willingness) to transcend partisanship and, as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it, "leading from behind" on foreign policy. Democratic convention planners need to convince undecided voters that Obama is a bold leader who ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a courageous leader who fought for an auto industry bailout despite strong public opposition and a tough leader who fought Republican obstructionists as he tried to keep the economy from slipping into depression.

Perception is reality in American politics. President Obama needs to change public perceptions.

Reduce the Democratic Party's enthusiasm gap

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5 ways Obama can make convention a success

CHARLOTTE, N.C. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro stepped into the national spotlight at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night with a soaring speech that evoked the struggles of his Mexican immigrant ancestors and how they paved the way for his success.

"The American Dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay," Castro told the cheering convention delegates.

Castro said his family's personal story highlights the choices Americans face in the election: Americans can chose President Barack Obama's policies, which he said invest in future generations, or chose his Republican rival's plan that he said helps the wealthy few.

And Castro brought the yelling delegates to their feet when he declared: "With the opportunity we build today for a shared prosperity tomorrow, America will prevail."

Castro spoke for 20 minutes as the showcase orator at Time Warner Cable Arena. Texas delegates shoehorned into the back of the arena stomped and waved blue and red placards during his speech.

Comparisons to Obama

Castro, 37, became the first Latino to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, a fact that underscores the importance of Hispanics to Obama in the Nov. 6 election.

The selection of Castro to keynote the convention also drew comparisons to Obama, whose "audacity of hope" speech at the Democrats' 2004 convention in Boston helped propel him to the U.S. Senate and later the presidency.

Castro spoke of humble beginnings and public assistance to achieve his dream - to be the mayor of San Antonio, the city of his birth.

Castro was introduced to the convention by his twin brother, Joaquin, placing them together on a national stage during prime-time television for the first time.

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Castro shares personal story during historic DNC keynote

DALLAS & FORT WORTH, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Mouser Electronics, Inc., a leading global authorized distributor for semiconductors and electronic components, salutes Maxim Integrated on their striking new branding initiative. The new Maxim Integrated is being unveiled today with the ringing of the opening bell on NASDAQ.

Founded in 1983, California-based Maxim Integrated is a worldwide leader in the design, development, and manufacture of analog and mixed-signal, high-frequency integrated circuits. A sampling of the applications for Maxim circuits includes consumer electronics, personal computers and peripherals, handheld electronics, wireless and fiber communications, test equipment, instrumentation, video displays, and automotive applications. Mouser strives to have the newest Maxim products in inventory and currently stocks the worlds widest selection of Maxim products for immediate shipment. Visit http://www.mouser.com/maximic to see their new branding and a complete listing of the Maxim products, reference designs, and many other tools for design engineers and buyers.

Our partnership with Maxim has been a tremendous success for us, and a huge benefit to our customers, says Mike Scott, Mouser Electronics Vice President of Semiconductors. Today is an exciting time for Maxim and we are proud to support them in their endeavors as a strategic partner. We look forward to many years of continued success together.

With its broad product line and unsurpassed customer service, Mouser caters to design engineers and buyers by delivering Whats Next in advanced technologies. Mouser offers customers 19 global support locations and stocks the worlds widest selection of the latest semiconductors and electronic components for the newest design projects.Mouser Electronics website is updated daily and searches more than 8.9 million products to locate over 3 million orderable part numbers available for easy online purchase. Mouser.com also houses an industry-first interactive catalog, data sheets, supplier-specific reference designs, application notes, technical design information, and engineering tools.

About Mouser Electronics

Mouser Electronics, a subsidiary of TTI, Inc., is part of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway family of companies. Mouser is an award-winning, authorized semiconductor and electronic component distributor, focused on the rapid introduction of new products and technologies to electronic design engineers and buyers. Mouser.com features more than 3 million products online from more than 450 manufacturers. Mouser publishes multiple catalogs per year providing designers with up-to-date data on the components now available for the next generation of electronic devices. Mouser ships globally to over 375,000 customers in 170 countries from its 492,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility south of Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.mouser.com.

About Maxim Integrated

Maxim makes highly integrated analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. Maxim reported revenue of approximately $2.4 billion for fiscal 2012. For more information, go to http://www.maxim-ic.com.

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Mouser Electronics Congratulates Maxim Integrated on Global Success

Lionel Messi has revealed that it is his dream to become successful with Argentina, ahead of his side's 2014 World Cup qualifiers against Paraguay and Peru.

The diminutive forward is regarded as arguably the best player of his generation, having enjoyed enormous acclaim at club level with Barcelona since his debut in 2004.

However, he has come in for criticism following his failure thus far to inspire Argentina to a major trophy - something the superstar is desperate to put right.

"I have had the good fortune to win trophies with my team and on a personal level," he told reporters. "I am missing one with the senior team. That is my dream. It is a difficult road to the World Cup."

The Albiceleste currently sit third of nine teams in the South American zone after three wins, one draw and a defeat in their first five games, and Messi insists his country must approach the next two matches with a positive mindset.

"Paraguay and Peru will be two difficult opponents, all the games in qualifying are difficult," he added. "The qualifiers are very tough and we must keep growing as a team. Against Paraguay we must have the ball and attack because we know they are a hard team.

"We are getting results and we can work calmly. We hope to continue like this in our next two games. You cannot drop points at home, and we want to play well, but the most important thing is to win. We will try and play well and excite the fans."

Nonetheless, Argentina seems to have turned the corner under new boss Alejandro Sabella, with five straight wins for the team, including emphatic friendly victories over Brazil and Germany.

Messi has played a key role in the recent run, recording hat tricks against the Selecao and Switzerland, and he attributes his improved form to the country's passionate support.

"I do not know if this is my best year with the national team," he remarked. "We have won a few games in a row and it is a while since we managed that. I played well at the Copa America, then there were some ups and downs, now I am enjoying how it is going.

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Messi eyes 'dream' success with Argentina

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2012) During adolescence, the stories young people tell about themselves reflects their development of a personal identity and sense of self, and those autobiographical narratives vary depending on the teens' gender, according to a University of Missouri psychologist and her colleagues. Parents can use this knowledge of how teens talk about themselves to help understand the tumultuous transitions of their children into adults.

"Autobiographical stories tell us details about adolescent psychology that questionnaires and observations of behavior cannot," said Jennifer Bohanek, assistant professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts and Science. "Narratives provide information about how adolescents interpret memories as well as how they come to know themselves. Other people then come to know the teens by the stories they tell about themselves. The differences between study participants' stories suggest there may be differences in the way male and female teens understand themselves and present themselves to the world."

Bohanek and her colleagues found that females tended to tell longer, more coherent stories. Females' stories were also generally more detailed and contained more descriptions of their own internal emotional states. Males' stories tended to be more matter-of-fact and showed less self-reflection. These differences were consistent in both positive and negative stories. The researchers suggested that the gender differences may indicate females have a greater inclination to reflect on past experiences and use their memories to give personal meaning to past events.

To conduct her study, Bohanek and her colleagues asked 65 adolescents between 13 and 16 years of age to narrate two positive and two negative stories. The teens came from racially and economically diverse backgrounds. The study was conducted in the teens' homes by one or two female research assistants. The teens' stories were then analyzed for coherence, theme, narrative development and self-reflection.

"Our study filled an important gap in the research on autobiographical narratives," said Bohanek. "Previous studies looked at gender differences in children's and adults' storytelling. Other research has found there are differences in the ways parents tell stories to male and female children as well as differences in how emotional content was explained. Other studies found that families talked about past events every five minutes on average, so reflecting on the past seems to have an important influence on family relationships. Our study suggests that these interactions may affect adolescents as they develop their own definition of themselves."

The study, "Gender Differences in Adolescents' Autobiographical Narratives," was published in the Journal of Cognition and Development. Lead author was Robyn Fivush of Emory University. Co-authors were Widaad Zaman of Emory University and Sally Grapin of Brown University.

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Teens tell different tales about themselves depending on gender

Cupertino, Calif., Sept. 5, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Most everyone has personal devices that they want to be able to use for work. Whether it's their smartphone, personal laptop or the tablet they got for their birthday, employees want to be able to use their own device, connect to the corporate network and conduct business. While personal mobile device use can help boost productivity, organizations that quickly endorse BYOD can introduce serious security gaps. So what kinds of BYOD risks need to be managed, how can you obtain BYOD policy acceptance, and how can you limit mobile device exposures?

A new SANS webcast, "Architecting a Flexible Strategy for Securing Enterprise and Personal Mobile Devices (BYOD)," will answer these questions and more. The expert session will examine BYOD trends and risks, the mobile security landscape, policy development and control options. The session will also present a tiered service approach to enterprise mobile security, where complementary controls can offer necessary network and device level defenses to enable IT organizations the means to realize mobility advantages and reduce security threats.

The webcast will be led by guest speaker Phil Hochmuth, security program analyst at IDC, who will be joined by Scott Gordon, vice president at ForeScout Technologies Inc.

This SANS webcast, sponsored by ForeScout, will take place on Thursday, September 14, 2012 at 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT. ForeScout invites users and media to register for the webcast at: http://www.forescout.com/byodflex. As a special bonus, registrants will receive a complimentary, in-depth IDC white paper on the issues presented.

The webcast presents proven process and technology considerations that InfoSec professionals can put to immediate use. Other topics that will be addressed include:

About ForeScout Technologies, Inc. ForeScout enables organizations to accelerate productivity and connectivity by allowing users to access corporate network resources where, how and when needed without compromising security. ForeScout's automated solutions for network access control, mobile security, endpoint compliance and threat prevention empower IT agility while preempting risks and eliminating remediation costs. Because the ForeScout CounterACT platform is easy to deploy, unobtrusive, intelligent and scalable, it has been chosen by more than 1,300 of the world's most secure enterprises and military installations for global deployments spanning 37 countries. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, ForeScout delivers its solutions through its network of authorized partners worldwide. Learn more at http://www.forescout.com.

ForeScout Technologies, Inc. is a privately held Delaware corporation. ForeScout, the ForeScout logo, CounterACT and ActiveResponse are trademarks of ForeScout. Other names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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ForeScout Sponsors SANS Webcast: "Architecting a Flexible Strategy for Securing Enterprise and Personal Mobile Devices ...

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04-09-2012 06:08 http Google Faculty Summit 2012 July 26, 2012 Mountain View, California Online Learning Presented by Peter Norvig, Google Director of Research Google Faculty Summit 2012 Online Learning google faculty summit, online learning, mooc, education

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Google Faculty Summit 2012: Online Learning - Video

LAS VEGAS (AP) When Hilary Nagel goes to "class" at College of Southern Nevada, she powers on her iPad and listens to a lecture in her pajamas from the comfort of her home.

Nagel, 28, is among the university students across the nation taking online classes. As cash-strapped colleges contend with budget cuts, higher-education leaders and politicians have looked toward online education as a potentially cheaper way to educate students.

In Nevada, which last year saw a 14 percent decline in state funding for higher education, online classes have proliferated as demand has grown.

The first college in Southern Nevada to offer online education was CSN, in 1996. The state's largest higher education institution started out with one computer server, 37 sections of online classes and 528 online students.

By last fall, CSN's "Online Campus" had grown to 18 servers and 962 online sections with more than 13,000 online students.

"We started very small, but grew quickly," Terry Norris, director of e-learning at CSN, told the Las Vegas Sun (http://bit.ly/QC8Cdg). "It was hard to keep up with the growth."

Online courses become viable options because students may be bound by time and geographical constraints, Norris said.

Virtual classrooms allow rural students in Tonopah and Nellis Air Force Base students serving overseas to complete their degrees at CSN. Las Vegas students like Nagel who work during the day can still go to college by logging online in the evenings and weekends.

UNLV junior Yisrael Vincent, who has attended CSN for two years, said he could no longer afford the hour-long commute to campus. That's one of the reasons why he began taking online classes, he said.

"(The commute) ends up being a higher opportunity cost than logging on at home," the accounting major said.

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Online classes proliferate in Nevada colleges

PALM SPRINGS, Calif., Sept. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- World Education University (pronounced "we-you"), the first tuition-free, global, online higher education institution designed to provide comprehensive course offerings and full degrees to students, today announced the signing of its initial academic leadership team. Joining WEU, which has originated the term "Education Should Be Free" (ESBF), are 10 faculty representing the positions of University President, Deans of the Schools of Medicine and Health, Education, Psychology, Engineering, Law, and Arts, and Directors of Curriculum, Education Design and Standards and Compliance. WEU executives are still in the process of recruiting a Dean for the School of Business.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120905/CG68371LOGO)

"We are honored to be welcoming this top-caliber group of higher education professionals to the WEU staff," says Curtis Pickering, WEU Co-Founder and Chairman/CEO. "These individuals, established leaders and practitioners in both academia and private - sector worlds, share WEU's dedication to transforming higher education to reflect a more inclusive, equitable environment. Among our faculty are experts in the high needs areas of STEM, differentiated learning, business entrepreneurship, management, and educational leadership who are poised to help students achieve a solid academic education that also includes mastery of the 21st century skills employers say are crucial to success in today's workplace."

New faculty include:

Dr. James Waddell University President, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jim Waddell holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophical Theology from the University of Oxford, is a Foundation Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, and Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing, and Commerce. Dr. Waddell has taught at Princeton, been president of Menlo College in California, and as president of the Waddell Group, assisted colleges, universities, and corporations in launching, developing, and expanding programs in management, humanities, and education.

Dr. Sally Kilgore Dean of the School of Education Dr. Sally Kilgore is former Director of the Office of Research for the U.S. Department of Education, co-principal investigator of a National Science Foundation study of mathematics and science achievement, founder and former CEO of Modern Red School House, and author of the recent book From Silos to Systems. She has served on the faculties of several universities, including Emory University. Dr. Kilgore holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago and has an undergraduate degree from Baylor University.

Dr. Penny Orr Dean of the School of Psychology Dr. Penny Orr's extensive training and work in psychology, education, and creative fields has driven her to be a student-centered advocate and a creative innovator in developing programs that meet student needs while ensuring academic rigor. Dr. Orr is a registered and board certified Art Therapist, and Art Therapy Certified Supervisor and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Furman University, a Master of Arts in Art Therapy from The School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Purdue University.

Debra Rocha, J.D. Dean of the School of Law Dr. Debra Rocha has been on the faculty of several higher learning institutions, has instructed adult learners in undergraduate and graduate degree programs, authored over 400 online law related courses and developed 13 law related degree programs. Dr. Rocha holds a Juris Degree from American College Law with course work completed at Suffolk University College of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. She also holds a Master ofScience degreein Criminal Justice from Salve Regina University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Administration of Justice and a Paralegal Certificate from Roger Williams University. Dr. Rocha was also founding Dean of the California Southern University College of Law.

Dr. Vanessa Sheldon Dean of the School of Arts Dr. Vanessa Sheldon is an internationally-known practicing musician, on the faculty of several southern California colleges, a member of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the Golden Key International Honour Society. Dr. Sheldon holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees of Music in instrumental performance from California State University (CSU) Los Angeles and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in harp and musicology from the University of Arizona.

Dr. Philip Slocum Dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences Dr. Philip Slocum's academic career spans more than three decades in both private and public medical schools, as both a faculty member and administrator. Dr. Slocum holds a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine. His interest in the interface of the principles of higher education with the principles of medical education led him to complete the Harvard University's Graduate School of Education's Management and Leadership in Education and the Institute of Educational Management programs. He is a recognized national leader in medical education, and noted for his critical views of the current state of health professions education and medical education.

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World Education University Announces Academic Leadership Team

If you're too young to remember the 1980s, you'll have to take my word for it: We thought we were pretty cool. New Coke, pink Izods, hair metal and The A-Team. We really turned pop culture on its head! (We didn't turn pop culture on its head.)

Of all the trends that seemed fantastically modern back then, few things said "the '80s" more than aerobics and the requisite leg warmers and unitards. The San Francisco band Moon Duo revives this exercise phenomenon and everything that now seems ludicrous about it in a new video for its song "Sleepwalker."

The scene, led by a mysterious guru, is both hilarious and terrifying (things get pretty creepy by the end). Fortunately, it's not scored by Sweatin' to the Oldies or Culture Club, but by Moon Duo's fabulously funked-out space rock.

"The original idea was to do a straight aerobics instructional video in the classic '80s style: humorous but also useful, something you could really work out to," says one-half of Moon Duo, Ripley Johnson. "We realized it would be more entertaining and practical to do something narrative, and [Moon Duo's] Sanae [Yamada] came up with the idea of a young couple finding an aerobics-class flyer on the street. The story ideas rolled forth from there, and by the time we cast King Khan as the instructor, we had a full-tilt aerobics cult story, with mystic logo, abduction, crazy costumes, the whole nine yards."

Ripley and Yamada are the DJs seen at the back of the aerobics classroom. They shot the video in Berlin with an all-volunteer cast, including Canadian musician King Khan (Arish Ahmad Khan).

"Sleepwalker" is the opening track to Moon Duo's latest album, Circles, due out Oct. 2 on Sacred Bones Records.

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First Watch: Moon Duo, 'Sleepwalker'