Strange new photo of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza released with college records

Western Connecticut State University

Undated student ID photo of Adam Lanza from Western Connecticut State University.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

A new photo of Sandy Hook massacre gunman Adam Lanza has emerged: a college ID snapshot that shows him staring wide-eyed into the camera as though scared out of his wits.

The picture, one of just a few that have been made public since the Dec. 14 shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, was part of Lanza's records from Western Connecticut State University, where he took classes in 2008 and 2009.

There is nothing in the documents that would foreshadow the monstrous attack, just a few odd notes.

When he took a placement exam in May 2008, Lanza refused to answer some background questions ? including his gender.

Asked whether he had a "documented disabling condition" that could impact his test scores, he said no ? although his mother had told people he had Asperger's disease, which is low on the autism spectrum.

Lanza was just 16 at the time, but he scored high on the test ? in the 90th percentile. The records also show he registered for a precalculus class, but it's unclear if he ever took it.

He did take three computer science courses, earning an A and an A-minus in two of them, and American history, where he received an A-minus.

He got a C in a a class called "Introduction to Ethical Theory."

No grade was entered for "Introduction to German," and that prompted a post-massacre email on Dec. 17 from the registrar to the German professor, asking for her to submit one. The response was macabre.

"Do you realize that this Lanza Adam is the young man who was from Newtown and shot himself and so many others?" the teacher replied. "I do not think he still needs a grade."

Lanza withdrew from classes at Western Connecticut, and he was not enrolled in any school when he went on his rampage at Sandy Hook, killing 20 children, six staffers and himself after murdering his mother in her bed.

Search warrants released last week revealed that Lanza had an arsenal of guns, knives, samurai swords and ammunition at his disposal.

NBC News producer Tom Winter contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a43e887/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C0A20C175728570Estrange0Enew0Ephoto0Eof0Enewtown0Eshooter0Eadam0Elanza0Ereleased0Ewith0Ecollege0Erecords0Dlite/story01.htm

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Southern California sagebrush better suited to climate change, study finds

Apr. 1, 2013 ? California sagebrush in the southern part of the state will adjust better to climate change than sagebrush populations in the north, according to UC Irvine researchers in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology affiliated with the Center for Environmental Biology.

The results of their study, which appears online in Global Change Biology, will assist land management and policy decisions concerning coastal sage scrub restoration.

California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), also known as "cowboy cologne," is the fragrant gray-green shrub that once filled area ranch land. It's found on coastal hillsides for more than 400 miles along California's Pacific coast. Only about 10 percent of its original habitat remains -- the rest having been converted to human use -- and is home to a number of endangered species, including the California gnatcatcher, which depend on plants like sagebrush.

In their study, Jessica Pratt and Kailen Mooney transplanted sagebrush from sites up and down the California coast to a test garden near UC Irvine to see which shrubs were best able to withstand particular environmental challenges. They measured the differences in plant traits and responses to experimentally altered precipitation.

The researchers found that populations from southern sites, with historically variable rainfall amounts, adjusted with greater ease to altered precipitation than did populations from the historically invariant north. Accordingly, they asserted, reaction to climate change will differ across this species's range, with southern populations adapting more readily to future conditions.

"For instance, sagebrush from San Diego stretches, where precipitation varies substantially from year to year, were better able to respond to changes in precipitation than those from the San Francisco area," said Mooney, an assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology.

He and Pratt also analyzed long-term climate data from along the California coast and discovered that year-to-year variability in rainfall has been increasing.

Taken together, these findings suggest that it might be prudent to plant Southern California sagebrush on Northern California hillsides to compensate for this heightened fluctuation in precipitation.

Taxpayers and private donors currently spend millions trying to properly manage the remnants of coastal sage scrub and other diverse habitats that remain on public and private land. Pratt and Mooney hope to determine which strategies are most effective for the least cost.

"This work addresses basic issues in ecology in an applied framework that will be immediately useful in informing land management and policy decisions for coastal sage scrub restoration," said Pratt, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology & evolutionary biology. "Understanding the responses of important species to environmental change -- and how those responses scale up to affect other species -- will help us predict and mitigate the impacts."

The study received support from the Newkirk Center for Science & Society, the UC Irvine Graduate Division (through a 2011-12 Public Impact Fellowship), the Orange County Association of Environmental Professionals, the Newport Bay Conservancy and the Lake Forest Garden Club, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Center for Environmental Biology at UC Irvine links academic research and education with ecosystem management, stewardship of natural resources and sustainability efforts throughout Southern California.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Irvine.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jessica D. Pratt, Kailen A. Mooney. Clinal adaptation and adaptive plasticity inArtemisia californica: Implications for the response of a foundation species to predicted climate change. Global Change Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12199

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Z-fdaRAQISY/130401132100.htm

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Lindsay Lohan set to visit 'Late Show' next week

NEW YORK (AP) ? Lindsay Lohan will be a guest on "Late Show with David Letterman" next week.

CBS says she will pay Letterman a visit on the April 9 telecast. It will be her first "Late Show" appearance in six years.

Lohan is promoting her guest appearance on the FX sitcom "Anger Management," which will air two days later. On that episode, she will be playing herself, but as a therapy patient of series star Charlie Sheen.

Lohan and Sheen have also recently worked together in the upcoming "Scary Movie 5," which is opening this month.

The troubled 26-year-old actress is currently facing 90 days in rehab as part of a plea deal in a misdemeanor car crash case in California.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lindsay-lohan-set-visit-show-next-week-183101992.html

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Church gunman in rambling Ohio court appearance

ASHTABULA, Ohio (AP) ? An ex-convict charged with killing his father at an Easter Sunday church service in Ohio made rambling comments during an appearance in court, and the prosecutor requested a psychiatric evaluation.

The suspect, 28-year-old Reshad Riddle, appeared Monday afternoon in Ashtabula (ash-tuh-BYOO'-luh) Municipal Court in an orange jail jumpsuit with his ankles and wrists in chains.

The bearded Riddle made rambling comments about God and said he wanted to be treated fairly. The prosecutor asked for $1 million bail and, if he makes it, a psychiatric evaluation and 24-hour monitoring.

No plea was entered on an aggravated murder charge and two weapons counts.

Police say he went to the church and killed his father, 53-year-old Richard Riddle, with a single shot from a handgun Sunday afternoon. Worshippers fled in panic.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/church-gunman-rambling-ohio-court-appearance-184402350.html

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New mathematical model shows how society becomes polarized

Mar. 29, 2013 ? Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes watching some of the more partisan "news" networks lurking in the bowels of cable television is aware that America has grown more polarized in recent years. What's not so certain is why. In a paper published online March 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers at Stanford has devised a mathematical model that helps demonstrate what's behind the growing rift.

Hint: It's you, not them.

"We believe that polarization is less a reflection on the state of our society, but instead stems from the process people go through to form opinions," said Ashish Goel, a professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) and co-author of the paper.

Prevailing theories

The prevailing sociological theory, known as homophily, is that like seeks like. Those who have similar opinions tend to aggregate together and reinforce opinions that grow more divergent from the center over time. This is the echo chamber model that would seem to gain validation in the era of talk radio, cable news and the Internet.

According to this theory, we are polarized precisely because we have greater ability to choose our social networks and news sources. We narrowly tailor our information sources by selecting them based on how closely they mirror our own tastes.

Mathematical models that try to use homophily to explain polarization have come up short, however. Most are based on something known as De Groot's model that assumes that people form opinions in a way that minimizes overall disagreement within their network of friends and relations. As a result, an individual's opinion gradually converges to an average of those in his or her network, or so the theory goes. The flaw in these models is that they predict that opinions in society as a whole can only become more uniform over time, resulting in depolarization rather than polarization.

"We show that repeated averaging of opinions always results in less divergent opinions, even in networks where the people are like-minded," said Pranav Dandekar, a doctoral candidate in MS&E and a co-author on the paper. "You can't create outliers by averaging."

A different approach

The Stanford team instead took a different approach based on a phenomenon well known in the social sciences called biased assimilation. In biased assimilation people more easily accept evidence that supports their opinion and, likewise, are prone to discredit evidence that does not fit. More specifically, people look at inconclusive evidence in a way that is most favorable to their existing point of view.

"It seems counter-intuitive that two individuals would arrive at a more divergent opinion when presented with identical information that is inconclusive, but that's what happens," said David Lee, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and a co-author of the paper. "You might think that seeing identical evidence would produce greater moderation and agreement, but it doesn't."

"It seems we look at the world with rose-colored blinders. We see what we want and ignore what doesn't fit," Dandekar said.

Putting the model into practice

The team has studied biased assimilation to help create Internet-based social systems that counteract polarization by what they describe as "surprising validators" -- counterbalanced evidence that is presented by otherwise well-known and trusted sources. Imagine Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow taking an unexpected stance. If you were aligned with one or the other, you might be more inclined to listen to the evidence if presented by the source most similar to you on other issues.

"We want to use the insight from our mathematical analysis to create recommendation engines and online collaboration tools to help people find common ground on difficult and divisive societal issues," Lee said.

One such example is Widescope, a budgeting tool built by Goel's research group, in which people take on the role of Congress to allocate the federal budget as they see fit and to compare their budgets against those proposed by various people in Washington -- Paul Ryan and President Obama for instance -- to see where the differences are.

"What you learn when you see the two budgets side-by-side is just how similar they really are. By articulating the similarities rather than the differences we can focus on collaborating to find a solution," said Goel.

Algorithm in practice

The team used their working model of biased assimilation to also study the polarizing effects of three popular Internet-based recommender systems. Recommender systems are widely used on the Internet to deliver personalized search results, news articles and product suggestions based on the user's likes and dislikes.

It has been claimed that these systems contribute to polarization by compounding the echo chamber effect where, for example, a left-leaning user is recommended more liberal articles and a right-leaning user is recommended more conservative ones.

"The system that recommends the most relevant item to a user turns out to be always polarizing. The other two systems, which chose a random item liked by the user and recommends an item most similar to it, were polarizing only if the user was biased to begin with. It was surprising to find that biased assimilation provides a useful framework to analyze the polarizing effects of recommender systems." Dandekar said.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford School of Engineering, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. The original article was written by Andrew Myers, associate director of communications for the Stanford University School of Engineering.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. P. Dandekar, A. Goel, D. T. Lee. Biased assimilation, homophily, and the dynamics of polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217220110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/59wOVJ2-kyc/130401090714.htm

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21years later, Pitino and Krzyzewski meet again

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino are finally doing an encore.

For the first time since their teams played perhaps the greatest game in the history of the NCAA tournament, Krzyzewski and Pitino will meet in the NCAA tournament Sunday when top-seeded Louisville faces Duke. In the regional finals, no less.

Never mind that few of their current players were even born in 1992. Or that Pitino is no longer at Kentucky, having switched sides in the state's civil war after his brief trip to Boston and the NBA ended badly.

Krzyzewski and Pitino are forever linked by that one game in Philadelphia, immortalized by Christian Laettner's improbable shot.

"It's one of those moments in time that helped define our sport," Krzyzewski said Saturday. "When I've talked to Rick about it, we realize we were the lucky guys. We had different roles at that time, but we were both lucky to be there."

Said Pitino, "It was like being in Carnegie Hall and seeing the best musician or the best singer. Just sitting there in amazement of what they were doing out on the basketball court."

Krzyzewski and Pitino are two of the finest coaches of their generation, with five NCAA titles and 1,618 victories between them. Yet for all of their success, and for as good a friends as they are, Krzyzewski and Pitino rarely play each other.

When Louisville (32-5) and Duke (30-5) played in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in November ? Duke won ? it was the first time Krzyzewski and Pitino had played each other since '92. Sunday's game will be their third meeting ever.

"That's why we got them in the conference. Got to start doing this a little bit more," Krzyzewski joked, referring to Louisville's upcoming move to the ACC.

But almost nothing could top that first meeting between them.

The Blue Devils, led by Laettner and Grant Hill, were defending national champions in 1992. Kentucky was on the rise again after two years on probation. When they met in the old Spectrum for the East Region finals, it was a showdown of the 1 and 2 seeds, a game worthy of a national championship.

"It was such a high-scoring game with so much perfection in the way players passed and shot the ball. That's what made it stand the test of time," Pitino said. "It was a game where two coaches could sit back and watch great players perform at the highest level."

After coming from 10 down in regulation, Kentucky appeared to have the game won when Sean Woods made a running bank shot in the lane with 2.5 seconds left in overtime. Duke called a timeout, and gave the ball to Grant Hill to inbound.

The Wildcats knew the ball was going to Laettner, a 6-foot-11 center who'd made a buzzer-beater against Connecticut in the regional finals two years earlier. But without Jamal Mashburn ?he'd fouled out ? Pitino pulled John Pelphrey and Deron Feldhaus aside and warned them not to foul.

"I said, 'Whatever you do, don't foul him. He hasn't missed a shot,'" Pitino recalled. "I shouldn't have done that. That was the mistake I made. I should have said, 'Whatever you do, bat down the ball. I don't care what the contact is, go for the basketball.'

"You saw my guys freeze a little bit."

As anyone who's ever watched the NCAA tournament in the last 21 years knows, Hill threw a strike from the far baseline and found Laettner at the foul line with his back to the basket. Laettner faked right, spun to his left and his 15-footer hit nothing but net as the buzzer sounded.

"I don't think you can realize the significance at that time," Krzyzewski said. "I will always remember the stark difference in emotion. Because, right in front of me, Richie Farmer collapsed. I see our guys jump and I see him fall. And really, I was more taken by Richie. I understood by looking at him ... just how tough that was."

It was agonizing for the first 24 hours, Pitino said. But when he popped a tape of the game in the next day, he saw it in a different light.

"I just sat back and said, 'Darn, that was some hell of a basketball game,'" he said. "I got the guys together and I said, 'Man, that was a great game.' Really was a great game, especially playing without Mash."

Duke would go on to win its second straight title, beating Michigan in the final. Kentucky would complete its revival four years later when the Wildcats beat Syracuse for their sixth NCAA title and first since 1978.

But it is that game that everyone remembers, and the years have done nothing to diminish it.

Clips of the play are on repeat throughout the tournament each year. And as the NCAA celebrates 75 years of March Madness this year, the Laettner play has been among the highlights.

"I do think about it often," Pitino said. "Not from a revenge standpoint, but as a great game that I was happy to be part of.

"To me, it's one of the best losses I've ever had," he said. "A bad loss is where your guys play terrible, you don't play. It was a great loss because my guys played almost a perfect game and we just had the wrong ending for us. But it was one of the greatest basketball games ever played because it was so high-powered with great play. One great play after another. That was fun to be part of."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/21years-later-pitino-krzyzewski-meet-again-215503493--spt.html

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Three killed, more than 20 hurt in 75-vehicle pileup

GALAX, Va. (AP) ? About 75 vehicles crashed Sunday along a mountainous, foggy stretch of interstate near the Virginia-North Carolina border, killing three people and injuring more than 20 others, police said.

Traffic backed up for about 8 miles in the southbound lanes of I-77 in southwest Virginia. Authorities closed the northbound lanes so fire trucks, ambulances and police could get to the wreck.

A series of crashes began around 1:15 p.m. Sunday in the area of Fancy Gap Mountain. There was heavy fog at the time and photos of the scene after the accident showed poor visibility.

"This mountain is notorious for fog banks. They have advance signs warning people. But the problem is, people are seeing well and suddenly they're in a fog bank," said Glen Sage of the American Red Cross office in Galax.

The Red Cross was setting up a shelter at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post for people stranded by the pileup.

Several vehicles caught fire in the wreck, but the blaze was put out, Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

About 10 people were taken to Northern Hospital of Surry County in Mount Airy, N.C., for mostly minor injuries, said Carol Porey, a supervisor there. The extent of the other injuries wasn't immediately clear.

Authorities did not know how long the interstate would be closed. Tow trucks worked to clear some of the wrecked cars and trucks.

Sage said school buses took about two dozen people to the shelter and more were expected. The site was set up to accommodate 100 people.

Relatives likely would pick up local residents brought to the shelter. People passing through might need to stay overnight, he said.

Motorists were advised to seek alternate routes.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3-killed-75-vehicle-pileup-virginia-nc-line-195155232.html

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