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President Barack Obama stands looks to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen during the opening session of the North Atlantic Council at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama, right, shakes hands with with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, during their meeting at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20, 2012. With Obama, Karzai thanked Americans for the help their 'taxpayer money' has done in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

From left, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, attend the opening session of the North Atlantic Council at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaks to media before state and government leaders arrive at the NATO Summit in Chicago Sunday, May 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama, right, during his meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20, 2012. Obama said the NATO alliance agrees on a vision for post-2014 Afghanistan. Karzai said the transition in his country will mean that Afghanistan is "no longer a burden" on the rest of the world. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

CHICAGO (AP) ? President Barack Obama and NATO allies declared Sunday that the end of the long and unpopular Afghanistan war is in sight even as they struggled to hold their fighting force together in the face of dwindling patience and shaky unity.

From his hometown and the city where his re-election operation hums, Obama spoke of a post-2014 world when "the Afghan war as we understand it is over." Until then, though, remaining U.S. and allied troops face the continued likelihood of fierce combat.

Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, offered a stern warning Sunday that the plan to give Afghan forces the lead in fighting next summer won't take coalition troops out of harm's way. "It doesn't mean that we won't be fighting," Allen said. "It doesn't mean that there won't be combat."

The fate of the war is both the center of this summit and a topic no one is celebrating as a mission accomplished. The alliance already has one foot out the Afghanistan door, Obama has his ear attuned to the politics of an economy-driven presidential election year and other allies are pinching pennies in a European debt crisis.

As NATO powers and other nations contributing to the war effort gathered, the alliance's top officer, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, asserted that "there will be no rush for the exits" in Afghanistan. "Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged," he said.

In fact, the strategy has shifted many times over the course of more than 10 years of war, and the goal narrowed to objectives focused on the long-term security of the mostly Western nations fighting there. The timetable has also moved, despite the overall commitment to keep foreign forces in Afghanistan into 2014.

Tension over newly elected French President Francois Hollande's pledge to end his country's combat mission two years early infused the meeting. German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointedly cited the credo of the allies in the Afghanistan war, "in together, out together," and her foreign minister cautioned against a "withdrawal competition" by coalition countries.

Hollande said he was merely being pragmatic in keeping a campaign pledge to pull combat troops this year but this still would "let the alliance continue to work."

While France's new posture obviously rattled the leaders, Allen betrayed no concern about the coalition's common purpose coming unglued. "The mantra of this particular mission has been in together, out together," he told reporters. "And I'm not seeing, frankly, many voices being raised that would oppose that."

Obama warned of hard days ahead. Still, he said NATO envisions a decade of transformation after 2014, with the United States still contributing money and some residual forces but out of the war itself. The alliance was sealing plans on Sunday and Monday to shift foreign forces off the front lines next year to put Afghan troops up front.

"What this NATO summit reflects is that the world is behind the strategy that we've laid out," Obama said after lengthy talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "Now it's our task to implement it effectively."

The shift to Afghan forces, despite their uneven performance under U.S. and other outside tutelage so far, is in large part a response to plummeting public support for the war in Europe and the United States, contributors of most of international troops now fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.

No other nations have announced plans to follow suit behind France and remove troops early. More such shifts appear likely, however, as each country eyes the clock and its own tight pocketbook. Although the 130,000-member fighting force ? dominated by 98,000 U.S. troops? could absorb combat withdrawals by other partners in the Afghan coalition, alliance leaders are struggling to maintain the status quo.

A deal is expected during the summit that would see France bring combat forces out of the sometimes restive province where they are based, but leave training forces or other support in place. That is the model followed by the Netherlands, Canada and probably Australia, which intends to bring most of its 1,550 combat personnel home next year.

In all cases, politicians were heeding political imperatives about a war that has gone on much longer than ever envisioned.

A majority of Americans now say the war is unwinnable or not worth continuing. Only 27 percent of Americans say they back the effort while 66 percent oppose the war, a new low, according to an AP-GfK poll released earlier this month.

Presidential politics shadowed the summit. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused Obama of overseeing looming defense cuts that he said would undermine NATO's mission, without noting that many Republicans voted for the deal.

"An alliance not undergirded by military strength and U.S. leadership may soon become an alliance in name only," Romney wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. "At the same time that President Obama has been weakening our military, he has sent the message ? intentionally or not ? that the worth of NATO has diminished in America's eyes."

Thousands of demonstrators upset with the war in Afghanistan, climate change and the erosion of union rights marched through downtown Chicago as the leaders met.

Some are calling for the dissolution of the 63-year-old NATO military alliance. Others carried signs that read "War(equals)Debt" and "NATO, Go Home."

Karzai said his nation is looking forward to the end of war, "so that Afghanistan is no longer a burden on the shoulder of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and our other allies."

With all the talk of the war winding down, Allen's comments served as a sobering reminder that the transition to Afghan leadership in the fighting does not drop the curtain on combat for the coalition.

"I don't want to understate the challenge that we have ahead of us," he said. "The Taliban is still a resilient and capable opponent." Even with the Afghans in the lead, "we fully expect that combat is going to continue."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday to discuss efforts to reopen major roads used to supply NATO fighting forces in Afghanistan. White House officials said no deal was in place to reopen the supply lines but they cited "positive" signs in the ongoing discussions. "We believe we're moving in the right trajectory," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.

Pakistan closed the roads nearly six months ago in protest of an errant NATO air strike that killed Pakistani soldiers. The two nations are now haggling over the price the alliance will pay, with Pakistan demanding many times more per truck than they were paid a year ago, U.S. officials said.

Obama found himself at the center of a second international summit in as many days, shifting from the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland to the Chicago scene he calls home.

Opening the discussions Sunday, Obama declared, "Just as we've sacrificed together for our common security, we will stand together united in our determination to complete this mission."

___

AP writers Julie Pace, Desmond Butler and David McHugh contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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CANNES, France (AP) ? Jacques Audiard is on a quest to revive the B movie.

The French director has won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and been nominated for an Academy Award, but he has a passion for the colorful cut-price end of the cinema market: horror films and thrillers, melodramas and westerns.

Audiard said the original notion for his new feature "Rust and Bone" was to make "a B movie with a star" ? the star being France's Marion Cotillard, whose best-actress Oscar for Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie En Rose" has spawned a Hollywood career.

It's not a bad description. On one level, the film is an opposites-attract love story, set on the grittier side of the French Riviera, involving Cotillard's haughty animal trainer and Matthias Schoenaerts' down-and-out boxer. But the plot twists verge on melodrama. Early in the film Cotillard's character has her legs bitten off by a killer whale, and Audiard also throws in brutal bare-knuckle fights, a child in peril and scenes scored to a pounding Katy Perry track.

"In the end it's a very simple story ? with some complex elements to it," Audiard said in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival alongside his screenwriting collaborator Thomas Bidegain. "We take things from life and try to put cinema in them."

It is, he admits, a risky approach.

"If you get too stylized then it becomes ridiculous, it becomes unbelievable," said Audiard, as outside, thunder rumbled, unseasonable rain pounded the Croisette and a stiff wind whipped up a gray Mediterranean. "If you stick to reality you end up with a documentary approach and it can be boring."

The balance of gritty subject matter and cinematic flourish gives Audiard's films a flavor unlike those of any other filmmaker.

His 2005 film "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," about a man torn between crime and music, was a deft French update of the 1978 Harvey Keitel vehicle film "Fingers." ''A Prophet," which won Cannes' second-place Grand Prize in 2009, was a blend of tough prison drama and little-guy-makes-good story that was nominated for the foreign language Oscar.

Looking like a dapper academic with his trademark trilby hat and pipe, Audiard cited film fanatic's range of influences ? from 1960s Brazilian director Glauber Rocha to 1950s thriller "The Night of the Hunter" and Tod Browning's 1930s sideshow shocker "Freaks."

Bidegain, who also worked on "A Prophet," chimed in to call "Rust and Bone" "'Terms of Endearment' meets 'Freaks.'"

"Rust and Bone" grew from a desire to make a movie about the economic crisis, and was loosely adapted from a book of short stories by Canadian writer Craig Davidson ? with their California setting replaced by the Cote d'Azur.

Audiard said the power of B movies ? from 1930s horror films to 1940s film noir thrillers ? is that they said something about the crisis-ridden world around them.

It's an element he finds lacking in a lot of films now that the world is in crisis again.

"If you look at American studios, the big productions have nothing to do with reality," he said.

"We are just French filmmakers, but seen from here, things need to move. You have to find niches where you can put yourself, points of view from which you can see the world changing."

"Rust and Bone" has been well received at Cannes, where it is one of 22 films competing for the top prize, the Palme d'Or. There has been near-universal praise for the performances of Schoenaerts ? the beefy Belgian star of Oscar-nominated cattle drama "Bullhead" ?and Cotillard.

Audiard said Cotillard was the obvious choice for the role.

"She's an actress I'd seen in 'La Vie En Rose,' and I really liked her," he said. "I was very impressed by her masculinity, somehow, her toughness."

Her star quality also gave the film an edge.

"It's an interesting thing to cut off the legs of a star," the director said. "The higher they are, the better they fall."

Audiard's films can take years to go from conception to completion ? "Rust and Bone" was in the works for three years and was completed just days before its Cannes premiere. He says it's too soon to talk about his next project.

But he has an idea.

"I really would love to do a musical about drug and arms trafficking," he said, a touch wistfully, turning to Bidegain. "We have to do it."

__

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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TRIVANDRUM, India ? R. Padmanathan Nair sits on a plastic chair in the entryway of the Heritage senior home talking about the fellow residents who treat him like family, which is helpful seeing as his own rarely visits.

His wife tried to abscond with their valuables, he said, so he gave the house to a niece, who ignored him after she got the property. Now his daughter is the only one who visits the 76-year-old retired teacher here in the capital of the southern state of Kerala, and that?s just a few times a year.

?But she only comes to get money from me,? said Nair, unshaven and dressed in a white lungi skirt-like garment and striped polo shirt, his voice rising in anger. ?It?s a blessing there are homes like this.?

India, a nation that prides itself on the inclusive embrace of its extended families, is slowly accepting a feature long common in the West: elder-care facilities.

Social changes find more urban families rejecting traditional arrangements involving grandparents, parents and children under one roof, preferring life without nosy in-laws. Economics is also playing a role as more professionals work abroad or in large Indian cities, too busy to care for aging parents.

But things work both ways, sociologists say. More older people also prefer living with others their age, even enjoying a bit of romance away from the disapproving gaze of grown-up children.

?Life here is easier than living with my family in all respects,? said P.V. Bhaskasan, also a retired teacher. ?There?s too much fighting in extended families.?

As India?s traditional social contract frays, however, seniors are also more subject to neglect, physical and mental abuse and depression. In 2010, 11,100 people older than 60 committed suicide, a 20 percent increase from 2008.

?In abuse cases, parents don?t want to come out against their own children,? said Anjali Raje, deputy executive director of the International Longevity Center in Pune. ?So it?s swept under the rug.?

The idea of senior homes has long carried a stigma in India.

?I can?t imagine sending my parents to one of these,? said Sathish Kumar, 47, a Trivandrum rickshaw driver who shares care of his 77-year-old father with his brother. ?It?s rather tragic.?

But that?s changing, as more upscale gated communities for seniors, such as Mumbai?s pioneering Dignity Lifestyle, offer saunas, aromatherapy, gyms and pools.

Because it?s a relatively new concept, there?s a generational difference, with those in their 70s and 80s generally more unhappy about living in a senior home and those in their 60s ? a group that?s had more time to watch society change around them ? more accepting, said Dr. C.P. Muralidhara, care home manager at Utsav Retirement Resort outside New Delhi.

India, with its relatively young population, is still a long way from Western nations. Most extended families still live together, and even when grown children move away they tend to stay relatively close and visit often.

But the picture is changing, with the number of India?s people older than 60, now at 96 million, expected to double by 2030. Critics say government planners are so enamored of the ?India shining? narrative of its young people that they all but ignore the demographic shift.

?This is the government?s last priority,? said Roshan Jacob, an elder-care expert. ?We?re digging our own grave. It?s a 200 percent crisis for India if we don?t start thinking about this.?

A recent survey by Economist magazine rated India last among 40 nations, behind Uganda, on ?end-of-life care services,? including access to drugs and caregivers. Only a few medical colleges in this nation of 1.2 billion people teach geriatrics. And less than 15 percent of the population is covered by a pension system, which offers as little as $1.50 a month.

Kerala is at the leading edge of the trend, reportedly home at one point to half of India?s senior-care facilities. The state is among India?s most rapidly aging, its average life expectancy, at 72, nearly six years above the national average. And it has one of the highest percentages of its labor force working overseas.

Although there are growing options for middle-class retirees, those at the bottom in India often fall through the cracks. Institutions such as the 20-bed Bethany Home for the Aged, on the outskirts of Trivandrum, struggle to cope, taking in those destitute, abandoned, afflicted with Alzheimer?s disease.

One resident thinks he?s being poisoned every time they give him his blood-pressure medicine, said the home?s director, P. Edison, a minister with the Church of South India. Others don?t remember they?ve eaten and accuse the facility of starving them.

?Most of those living here don?t want to be here but have nowhere else to go,? he said. ?It takes enormous patience.?

At the other end of the spectrum is a growing number of upscale options, including the Utsav resort near New Delhi, where apartments for residents 55 and older in a gated enclave with manicured lawns and fancy topiary sell for $40,000 or more, plus monthly maintenance charges.

Residents Sushila Jagtiani, 75, and her husband, Lal, 78, both retired doctors, considered living at a senior home in Australia near their son but opted for Utsav in part because it was much less expensive. ?And residents in the Australia home were all lonely,? she said. ?In India, it?s not like that. At this stage we can?t adapt.?

Nair, the retired teacher, who?s lived at Heritage Home for 12 years, bemoans the loss of traditional Indian values in society.

?Young people today have become more like in America,? he said. ?They?re greedy and have no respect for the older generation.?

With the afternoon heat at its peak, he heads up some stairs to his 15-by-15-foot studio apartment, with a single bed on, a cupboard and a small altar with images of several Hindu gods.

Although he?s pleased that his fellow residents help one another, he says moving into a community with 56 unrelated people has its challenges. Occupants argue, yell, even have brawls.

?The way some residents act is quite deplorable,? he said. ?They may be old, but they?re not always very mature.?

(Tanvi Sharma of the Los Angeles Times? New Delhi bureau contributed to this report.)

Article source: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/20/4503193/as-indias-old-ways-change-senior.html

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BELGRADE (Reuters) - Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic and rightist Tomislav Nikolic went head to head on Sunday in a tense run-off election for Serbian president and the right to lead the struggling nation into talks on joining the European Union.

Despite economic stagnation and rising unemployment, Tadic is tipped to defeat Nikolic for the third time since 2004 as Serbia slowly sheds the legacy of a decade of war and isolation under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

A Tadic victory would keep power firmly in the hands of his Democratic Party.

But opposition allegations of fraud in parliamentary and first-round presidential elections two weeks ago could cause an upset, or cast a shadow over the result of the run-off if Nikolic carries out a threat to call supporters into the streets.

"After all the unfulfilled promises and corruption under Tadic, I believe Serbia needs to be refreshed and that's why I voted for Nikolic," voter Miodrag Petrovic, a 38-year-old marketing executive, said shortly after polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).

Election authorities and foreign monitors found no evidence of the 500,000 votes Nikolic says were forged in the parliamentary and first-round presidential polls.

Nikolic's Serbian Progressive Party says its monitors will confiscate ballot boxes and close polling stations if they observe irregularities.

"Our intention is to fight. What else can we do?" Nikolic's deputy, Aleksandar Vucic, told Serbian state television. "We are running to beat the thieves and liars."

A former member of the ultranationalist Radical Party, Nikolic was in government with Milosevic when Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999, but since last losing to Tadic in 2008 he has tried to reinvent himself as a pro-European conservative.

Tadic, who beat Nikolic by less than one percentage point in the first round, says his opponent's change in direction is purely cosmetic.

Handing power to Nikolic, he says, would slam the brakes on reform and reverse the process of reconciliation between Serbia and its ex-Yugoslav neighbours since Milosevic's ouster in 2000.

"We haven't crossed the Rubicon, but we are on the verge of it, and that's why we need another five-year term to consolidate the process," Tadic, 54, told Reuters in an interview.

KOSOVO

The lean, tanned and telegenic Tadic, campaigning in rolled-up sleeves and open-necked shirt, is seen as a safe pair of hands in a region that has seen enough loose cannons.

Nikolic, 60, is a dour former cemetery manager. A stiff and uninspiring orator, his straight-talking, man-of-the-people manner nevertheless appeals to rural Serbs and voters tired of the grinding transition from socialism to capitalism.

"Nikolic is a man of the past," said Ksenija Govedarica, 54, a schoolteacher in the capital's Socialist-era Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) municipality. "Tadic is also feeble and unconvincing, but I voted for the lesser evil. And at least Tadic is much better looking."

The West is watching closely, encouraged by Nikolic's conversion to the ultimate aim of EU membership but unsure about the substance of his policy or his capacity to rule.

At least rhetorically, the two sides differ little in economic policy or their approach to Kosovo, Serbia's former province where Belgrade is propping up a de facto ethnic partition four years after the Albanian-majority territory declared independence.

The EU made Serbia, population 7.3 million, an official candidate for membership in March, and could set a date for talks early next year if Belgrade takes steps to improve relations with Kosovo.

A Nikolic victory would likely usher in a difficult period of "cohabitation" with a Democrat-led government. Under the constitution, the prime minister is more powerful than the president, but the head of state can hold up legislation.

Nikolic's party narrowly won the parliamentary vote but the Democrats, who came second, are widely expected to make a coalition deal with the Socialists and form a government.

Nikolic accuses Tadic of overseeing a creeping culture of cronyism, deepening government control over the media and an economic slide that has seen unemployment reach 24 percent.

The economy will struggle to avoid stagnation this year, pummelled by the crisis in the euro zone, the Balkans' main source of investment and trade.

Political uncertainty has seen the dinar currency fall 5.81 percent against the euro this year, and in January the International Monetary Fund froze a standby loan deal over Serbia's rising budget deficit and public debt.

Analysts say the next government will have to cap pensions and public sector wages, cut jobs in state-run companies and accelerate the sale of key state assets.

Polls close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT). An unofficial projection of results is expected by 10 p.m. (2000 GMT).

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DUBLIN (AP) ? Seven Irish republicans, including three relatives of a senior reputed Real IRA member and four others allegedly operating a forest rifle range, were arraigned Saturday on terror charges following a security sweep against militants plotting to sabotage Northern Ireland's peace process.

Three were charged with "directing terror," a crime never before levied against a suspected Irish Republican Army member in Northern Ireland. Use of the charge suggests that police and Britain's domestic spy agency, MI5, believe they have caught senior members of the Real IRA faction and will present evidence from electronic surveillance and informers, typically the only means to convict senior figures.

Three relatives of Colin Duffy, a reputed senior Real IRA figure, appeared in a courtroom southwest of Belfast surrounded by police officers in full riot gear. None offered pleas and all were ordered held without bail until their next court appearance June 8.

Duffy's brothers, Paul, 47, and Damien, 42, and cousin Shane Duffy, 41, all were charged with four counts of preparing acts of terrorism, conspiring to murder and conspiring to cause explosions. Paul Duffy also was charged with directing terrorism.

Colin Duffy, who wasn't charged as part of the latest sweep, was acquitted in January of murdering two off-duty British soldiers. He joined relatives and friends in the courtroom's public gallery and cheered supportively as the three men were led away in handcuffs.

And in Omagh, the Northern Ireland town where the Real IRA committed the single deadliest bombing of the entire four-decade conflict, a woman and three men were arraigned on charges of preparing acts of terrorism, possessing a rifle and ammunition, and attending a Real IRA training camp in secluded woods near Omagh.

Two of those charged, 37-year-old Sharon Rafferty and 46-year-old Sean Kelly, also were charged with directing terror. All four were ordered held without bail until their next court date Tuesday.

The Real IRA killed 29 people, mostly women and children, in an Aug. 15, 1998, car-bomb attack on the center of Omagh. The group laid low for nearly a decade but in 2007 resumed attacks, chiefly against police and their civilian supporters.

Policemen testified that they had audio recordings of Rafferty and Kelly discussing how to target police officers, acquiring guns, running firearms training and financing Real IRA operations. Kelly is a former convicted member of the Provisional IRA, the dominant faction that renounced violence and disarmed in 2005.

All four allegedly were seen leaving a Real IRA firearms-training session in March, and police said they recovered both DNA evidence and about 200 casings of spent bullets from the scene. Police said they had found a rifle, terrorist-style masks, rubber gloves and four sets of waterproof clothing at the home of another man facing charges, Gavin Coney.

Northern Ireland authorities created the offense of "directing terror" in 1994 as a way to convict previously untouchable commanders of paramilitary groups, who typically didn't directly participate in attacks, but the new charge has been applied only once before: to convict Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, a notorious Belfast militant from the British Protestant side of the community, in 1995. Adair had been tape-recorded bragging to undercover policemen about his murderous exploits against the IRA's host Catholic community.

Authorities in the neighboring Republic of Ireland also introduced the "directing terror" charge in 1998 following the Omagh bomb atrocity, but it too has been used just once: to convict the founder and original senior commander of the Real IRA, Michael McKevitt. Proving that case required use of an American double agent recruited by the FBI and MI5 to befriend McKevitt.

Police braced for potential trouble Saturday in the Duffys' power base of Lurgan, a religiously polarized town southwest of Belfast. Typically Real IRA members and supporters have mounted car hijackings and bomb threats whenever Colin Duffy or his relatives have faced legal action.

In the first sign of such trouble within an hour of the Duffys' court appearance, police said they discovered a possible bomb at a roadside in the Belfast suburb of Dunmurry, evacuated several nearby homes, and deployed British Army bomb engineers to the scene.

Associated Press

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From Walkypedia!

Home Improvement Tips That Will Give You A Better Life

Surprisingly enough, how your house looks and operates can have an impact, positive or negative, on the way you feel. It is important to be happy with the way your home looks because you spend a good bit of time there. Knowing that the home suits your needs and ideals can make your living and working environment better. Use these tips to transform your home.

When considering home improvements, keep your own comfort in mind. Although it is normal for your home to not be perfect, major flaws can cause you displeasure. Small transformations of this sort can brighten your everyday life. You can replace your kitchen chairs and table or maybe buy a nice sofa.

Sometimes with good organization and purging, you can still run out of room in your house. Sometimes, adding more space is the only thing that will work. Adding just a small amount of space can greatly increase the feeling of openness and help relieve your stress.

Adding recreation areas to your home should be considered. Popular options include pools, spas, and hot tubs. You can also increase the value of your home by adding something like a home gym or basketball hoop.

Don't ignore the importance of lighting in the spaces in your life. Modified lighting can update the look and feel of a room, lessen eyestrain, and create a more versatile living space. If you are new to the do-it-yourself home improvement mindset, installing new lighting fixtures is a good first project.

You can become an expert at gardening! A beautiful garden area can be created, so start by picking the perfect spot on your property. Additionally, there is no reason why you can't put some landscaping effort into the whole yard. The more effort you put in, the nicer your property will look. If you do not have the leisure time or the talent to maintain your own garden, you can still reap the benefits by hiring a professional lawn care person. Maintaining a garden offers several benefits.

It is also wise to think about doing things to improve the exterior of your home. Fresh paint, new roofing materials, or replacement windows can add value to your home while significantly improving its appearance. Your home will have better curb appeal and be much more inviting for guests.

Since you spend a good bit of time in your home, it is important that you enjoy it. You should continually make improvements to your home, as it will make it more valuable.

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University of Nevada, Reno, scientists design indoor navigation system for blind

Public release date: 18-May-2012
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Contact: Mike Wolterbeek
mwolterbeek@unr.edu
University of Nevada, Reno

Low-cost accessible software uses smartphone and robot technology

RENO, Nev. University of Nevada, Reno computer science engineering team Kostas Bekris and Eelke Folmer presented their indoor navigation system for people with visual impairments at two national conferences in the past two weeks. The researchers explained how a combination of human-computer interaction and motion-planning research was used to build a low-cost accessible navigation system, called Navatar, which can run on a standard smartphone.

"Existing indoor navigation systems typically require the use of expensive and heavy sensors, or equipping rooms and hallways with radio-frequency tags that can be detected by a handheld reader and which are used to determine the user's location," Bekris, of the College of Engineering's Robotics Research Lab, said. "This has often made the implementation of such systems prohibitively expensive, with few systems having been deployed."

Instead, the University of Nevada, Reno navigation system uses digital 2D architectural maps that are already available for many buildings, and uses low-cost sensors, such as accelerometers and compasses, that are available in most smartphones, to navigate users with visual impairments. The system locates and tracks the user inside the building, finding the most suitable path based on the users special needs, and gives step-by-step instructions to the destination.

"Nevertheless, the smartphone's sensors, which are used to calculate how many steps the user has executed and her orientation, tend to pick up false signals," Folmer, who has developed exercise video games for the blind, said. "To synchronize the location, our system combines probabilistic algorithms and the natural capabilities of people with visual impairments to detect landmarks in their environment through touch, such as corridor intersections, doors, stairs and elevators."

Folmer explained that as touch screen devices are challenging to use for users with visual impairments, directions are provided using synthetic speech and users confirm the presence of a landmark by verbal confirmation or by pressing a button on the phone or on a Bluetooth headset. A benefit of this approach is that the user can leave the phone in their pocket leaving both hands free for using a cane and recognizing tactile landmarks.

"This is a very cool mix of disciplines, using the user as a sensor combined with sophisticated localization algorithms from the field of robotics," Folmer, of the University's Computer Science Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Lab, said.

The team is currently trying to implement their navigation system in other environments and integrate it into outdoor navigation systems that use GPS.

"My research is motivated by the belief that a disability can be turned into an innovation driver," Folmer said. "When we try to solve interaction design problems for the most extreme users, such as users with visual impairments, there is the potential to discover solutions that may benefit anyone. Though the navigation system was specifically developed for users with visual impairments, it can be used by sighted users as well."

For their work on the indoor navigation system for the blind, Bekris and Folmer recently won a PETA Proggy Award for Leadership in Ethical Science. PETA's Proggy Awards ("Proggy" is for "progress") recognize animal-friendly achievements. The navigation system was deemed such an achievement because it could decrease the need to rely on guide dogs.

They presented and demonstrated their research at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul., Minn. on May 15 and on May 7 at the CM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which is the premier international conference on human-computer interaction.

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For more information on the system, visit http://eelke.com/navatar. For more information about the University of Nevada, Reno College of Engineering, visit http://www.unr.edu/engineering/.

Nevada's land-grant university founded in 1874, the University of Nevada, Reno has an enrollment of 18,000 students and is ranked in the top tier of the nation's best universities. Part of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the University has the system's largest research program and is home to the state's medical school. With outreach and education programs in all Nevada counties and with one of the nation's largest study-abroad consortiums, the University extends across the state and around the world. For more information, visit www.unr.edu.

Media Contact:
Mike Wolterbeek
Media Relations Officer
University Media Relations
University of Nevada, Reno/108
Reno, NV 89557
mwolterbeek@unr.edu
Media newsroom: http://newsroom.unr.edu
775-784-4547 phone
775-784-1422 fax

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