Tech Start-Ups Find a Home on the Prairie

DES MOINES — As Ben Milne sought money for the mobile-payment company he began developing here three years ago, investors responded with rejections by the dozens.

Eventually, he coaxed $1 million from a pair of local investors. His app, Dwolla, has since attracted more than 100,000 users, and now moves $30 million to $50 million in transactions a month.

So when he decided to seek a second round of financing last year, Mr. Milne, a 29-year-old college dropout, had an easier sell. This time investors courted him. This year, he announced that Dwolla had drawn $5 million more in capital from investors on both coasts, including Ashton Kutcher and a firm with Twitter and Foursquare in its portfolio.

From Des Moines to Omaha to Kansas City — a region known more for its barns than its bandwidth — a start-up tech scene is burgeoning. Dozens of new ventures are laying roots each year, investors are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and state governments are teaming up with private organizations to promote the growing tech community. They are calling it — what else? — the Silicon Prairie.

Although a relatively small share of the country’s “angel investment” deals — 5.7 percent — are done in the Great Plains, the region was just one of two (the other is the Southwest) that increased its share of them from the first half of 2011 to the first half of this year, according to a report commissioned by the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights.

Fifteen to 20 start-ups, most of them tech-related, are now established each year in eastern Nebraska, a more than threefold increase from five years ago, according to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce. Today, there is more than $300 million in organized venture capital available in the state, as well as tax credits for investors; six years ago there was virtually none, according to the chamber.

Google Fiber’s first ultrafast Internet connection drew about a dozen start-ups to a neighborhood in Kansas City, Kan. And over the past seven months, about 60 start-ups have presented their ideas in Kansas City at weekly forums organized by Nate Olson, an analyst with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. In Iowa, Startup City Des Moines, an incubator financed with $700,000 in public and private money, including a quarter-million dollars from the state, received applications from 160 start-ups over the past two years. It has accepted 9 so far.

“Traditionally, you’d say, ‘Hey, if I want the safe lifestyle, I’ll stay here and I’ll do what generations before have done,’ ” said Jeff Slobotski, an Omaha native who four years ago started Silicon Prairie News, a Web site covering the region’s tech scene. Now, he continued, “there is a newer potential in terms of what can take place here and not having to hop on the first plane out of here — saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to set up shop in the Midwest in our cities and make a go at it here.’”

Still, the region’s entrepreneurs insist that they are not striving to replicate Silicon Valley or other well-known tech hubs like Boston.

“We’re creating different types of start-ups using local ingredients,” said Christian Renaud, a principal at an information technology start-up incubator here.

Among the companies that have started in the region over the past few years are Ag Local, a firm that created an online marketplace for trading meat; EyeVerify, which verifies people’s identities through eye-vein patterns; and Tikly, which created a platform for bands to sell concert tickets. But there also are many start-ups outside the information technology realm, focusing on fields like biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and medical devices.

Many entrepreneurs credit Silicon Prairie News for the region’s start-up growth. In addition to writing about start-up activity, The News also organizes conventions that connect entrepreneurs and investors. In the four years since its creation, Silicon Prairie News has covered the emergence of more than 80 companies in the region and more than 50 additional endeavors that spawned mobile or Web apps.

The Silicon Prairie still lags in national recognition as a start-up hub, however. Capital remains relatively sparse, and software engineers are in shorter supply than on the coasts.

“We’re just not aware of, potentially, the opportunities that exist in a variety of places in the middle of the country,” said Stephen T. Zarrilli, the president and chief executive of Safeguard Scientifics, a Philadelphia venture capital firm that has invested in companies across the country but not in the Great Plains.

Tech enthusiasts in the region are hoping to change that by pointing to other strengths: lower costs and a work force focused more on building strong companies than moving on to the next big thing, they say.

“In Nebraska and the Midwest in general, because the work ethic is so strong, you will find people that will work like they worked on the farm,” said Gordon Whitten, the chairman of VoterTide, an Omaha start-up that tracks and analyzes social media trends for campaigns, media companies and others.

Dwolla exemplifies both the potential and the challenges for the region’s start-ups.

Business owners here said that few people in Des Moines seemed familiar with Dwolla, which allows real-time money transfers that are less costly for merchants than credit card fees. Yet the fast-talking, matter-of-fact Mr. Milne, in his jeans and untucked shirts, has proved to be a savvy ambassador for his company and the region. He always pays with Dwolla when he can.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked a barista at a coffee shop he frequents in Des Moines, his hometown, before tapping his iPhone and watching his payment register on the shop’s touch screen.

He eagerly rattles off the advantages of building Dwolla here, where his headquarters boast all the trappings of Silicon counterculture: beer-stocked refrigerators, neon orange accent walls with well-used whiteboards tacked to them, and a legal counsel who comes to work in flip-flops.

One of the biggest boons, he said, was siphoning the expertise of executives in the city’s robust financial services sector. They advised him on structuring the company so it would not have to hold customers’ money, saving millions of dollars in licensing and bonding costs. That structure also led the company to create a unique system for transferring money without the usual days of processing delays.

“I don’t know if we would have found that relationship in the Valley,” Mr. Milne said. “We just hit so many golden-nugget opportunities in Des Moines and golden-nugget pieces of feedback.”

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LAFD looks at ways to speed up emergency response times

Los Angeles Fire Department officials, facing criticism over slow response times to 911 calls, are considering two new strategies that could get rescuers to the scene of medical emergencies more quickly.

One program, known as "quick launch," reduced the time it took to get fire units moving by an average of 50 seconds — roughly in half — during a test period in 2006. The experiment allowed dispatchers to send units before fully determining the nature of emergencies, according to internal LAFD documents obtained by The Times.

The test was discontinued because so many rescue units were being dispatched that it created gaps in coverage, department officials said during a Fire Commission meeting Tuesday. "It ties up resources," Fire Chief Brian Cummings explained to reporters.

FULL COVERAGE: 911 breakdowns at LAFD

But with pressure building to reduce response times, Cummings and the fire commissioners said Tuesday that the department will reexamine the program to see if it can be improved.

The agency also plans to roll out a separate program that would quickly alert paramedics and emergency medical technicians whenever a 911 call is received from their area. The alert would give rescuers a head start on gathering gear and getting into their trucks while dispatchers collect information on the nature of the emergency, according to the commander of the LAFD dispatch center.

The department is struggling to improve its data analysis and trying to reassure the public and elected officials about its emergency response performance. Fire officials have been under scrutiny since March, when they acknowledged that for years they had produced reports that made it appear rescuers were getting to victims faster than they actually were.

Fire commissioners on Tuesday also discussed a study by a special task force that found the department has produced inaccurate response-time data that should not be relied upon. Some of the faulty reports were used by City Council members when they decided to shut down fire engines and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 firehouses.

A Times investigation earlier this year found LAFD's dispatchers lag well behind national standards that call for rescuers to be sent to those in need in under 60 seconds on 90% of 911 calls. Those findings were confirmed this week in the report from the task force, which was headed by Asst. Chief Patrick Butler and included experts from inside and outside the department.

The quick-launch dispatching experiment was conducted over a four-week period in the summer of 2006. Dispatchers normally ask callers a series of carefully scripted questions to determine the severity of a medical incident. The answers typically must be entered into a computer before firefighters are dispatched.

The pilot program got rescuers rolling earlier in the 911 call-handling process. The 50-second reduction in average dispatching time exceeded officials' expectations and was "especially encouraging," according to an internal LAFD study obtained by The Times.

But Asst. Chief Daniel McCarthy, commander of the LAFD dispatch center, said firefighters were being sent to shooting scenes and other potentially dangerous locations not knowing what to expect.

"We put people at risk when we did that," McCarthy told The Times.

He said the department also will deploy a new dispatching system known as "quick alert." Rescuers will be notified over loudspeaker and by Teletype as soon as a medical 911 call is received involving their fire station's service area, speeding up so-called turnout time. Special notification equipment is expected to be installed at fire stations over the next 18 months, McCarthy said.

Last week, The Times reported that waits for medical aid vary dramatically across Los Angeles' diverse neighborhoods. Residents in many of the city's most exclusive hillside communities can wait twice as long for rescuers as those living in more densely populated areas in and around downtown, according to the analysis that mapped out more than 1 million dispatches since 2007.

Cummings acknowledged the findings on Tuesday, saying waits for help are longer in areas farther from fire stations.

"It is a matter of geography," the chief said. "Personally, if I had a serious medical condition, I'd live close to a hospital."

FULL COVERAGE: 911 breakdowns at LAFD

robert.lopez@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 21

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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“Hitchcock” trains lens on the love story of Alfred and Alma

NEW YORK (Reuters) – She won Oscar gold for her uncanny performance as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, but Helen Mirren‘s latest portrayal finds her as the power behind the throne — or, more precisely, the director’s chair.

In “Hitchcock,” Mirren stars opposite Anthony Hopkins as legendary director Alfred Hitchcock’s devoted wife Alma Reville, and early buzz has her a contender for another Oscar nomination.

The film, which opens in limited release on Friday, explores the domestic life of one of Hollywood‘s most iconic and revered directors, set during the days of his struggle to put the ground-breaking 1960 classic, “Psycho” on the silver screen.

Toggling back and forth between his on-set battles with censors and his cast including Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson), Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) and Tony Perkins (James D’Arcy), and his strained relationship with Alma as she copes with his well-documented obsession with his ravishing leading ladies, “Hitchcock” treats film fans to a glimpse of bygone Hollywood.

But it paints a more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of the director Hopkins called “a damaged man” than the recent television film “The Girl,” which dramatized the hell Hitchcock put Tippi Hedren through during filming of “The Birds.”

“It’s a great role,” Mirren said of Alma, a film editor and assistant director in her own right who ceded the spotlight to her husband, but as the film makes clear was involved in virtually every aspect of his films and even re-cut “Psycho” into the masterpiece it is known as today.

“So, you don’t turn that down,” she told Reuters.

Having won her Oscar as one of the world’s most famous women, Mirren said she finds herself drawn to “the ones I don’t know anything about, like Alma. Those are the most fun.”

With little to go on, Mirren said she turned to the 2003 book “Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man,” by the couple’s daughter Patricia, who also acted in several Hitchcock films.

“I’m not that much of a film buff that I knew about Alma, and I had no idea about Hitchcock‘s private life,” she said, adding the book aimed “to bring her mother out of the shadows.”

HITCH THE BRAND

By all accounts making the movie about the movies was a joy, with Mirren and Hopkins co-starring in their first film together under first-time director Sacha Gervasi (“Anvil: The Story of Anvil”), who fixed a script that had made the rounds.

Hopkins described it as the “most fun” since his Oscar-winning role in the thriller “Silence of the Lambs.”

Mirren recalled rushing off to work each day: “I couldn’t wait.” And it helped that the actors have the same approach.

“There’s no mystery to it … They talk about chemistry, and Helen agrees with me, there’s no such thing. You know your part, she knows hers, and off you go, hope it works,” Hopkins said.

But Mirren and Hopkins, who is also being touted for an Oscar nomination, parted ways when speculating on how the auteur director, who never won an Oscar during five decades of work, would have fared in the Hollywood of today.

“He would have despaired,” Hopkins said. “It would have been anathema to him. That kind of artistry is gone.”

Corporate control means “you have eight or nine producers on the set, everyone’s got a say in the scripts, and even craft services!”

But Mirren differed, imagining “he’d do brilliantly well.”

“He was a great salesman, and the Hollywood of today is so much about being a salesman and being able to sell yourself as a brand,” she explained. “He did that brilliantly. I think the two of them sold Hitch. Hitch was the faceman, he was the brand.”

“Also,” she added, “his filmmaking techniques would be incredibly successful,” given the technological advances since Hitchcock’s death in 1980.

Hitchcock was on a roll in his early 60s, with his “Psycho” follow-up, the shocking thriller “The Birds” becoming a hit and a much-loved classic. But none of the handful of films he made afterward attained their iconic status.

Mirren, 67, by contrast, truly hit her stride during her 40s, despite a steady two-decade career by that point.

Starting with the TV show “Prime Suspect” to the films “Gosford Park,” “The Queen” and “The Last Station,” she racked up four Oscar nominations and a mantel full of Emmys, which raises a question about the validity of complaints that Hollywood has no use for actresses over 40.

“I think what has changed is, the world around has changed,” Mirren said when reflecting on her success and acclaim.

“I was lucky that I hit my 40s just as the world around me was changing. Twenty years before I never would have been cast in ‘Prime Suspect’ because there were no women inspectors.”

And so, she looks forward.

“As I’ve carried on, my God, 20 years ago it was inconceivable that you’d have a female president of the United States,” she said.

“Now, the next president of America may well be a woman, and if there is a female president, that means that if a movie comes along, and there’s the president of America …” She laughs.

“You know what I mean?”

(Editing by Christine Kearney)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: The 'Love Hormone' as Sports Enhancer

Is playing football like falling in love? That question, which would perhaps not occur to most of us watching hours of the bruising game this holiday season, is the focus of a provocative and growing body of new science examining the role of oxytocin in competitive sports.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Oxytocin is, famously, the “love hormone,” a brain peptide known to promote positive intersocial relations. It makes people like one another, especially in intimate relationships. New mothers are awash in oxytocin (which is involved in the labor process), and it is believed that the hormone promotes bonding between mother and infant.

New-formed romantic couples also have augmented bloodstream levels of the peptide, many studies show. The original attraction between the lovers seems to prompt the release of oxytocin, and, in turn, its actions in the brain intensify and solidify the allure.

Until recently, though, scientists had not considered whether a substance that promotes cuddliness and warm, intimate bonding might also play a role in competitive sports.

But the idea makes sense, says Gert-Jan Pepping, a researcher at the Center for Human Movement Sciences at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and the author of a new review of oxytocin and competition. “Being part of a team involves emotions, as for instance when a team scores, and these emotions are associated with brain chemicals.”

Consider, he says, what happens during soccer shootouts. For a study that he and his colleagues published in 2010, they watched replays of a multitude of penalty shootouts that had decided recent, high-pressure World Cup and European Championship games.

They found that when one of the first shooters threw his arms in the air to celebrate a goal, his teammates were far more likely to subsequently shoot successfully than when no exuberant gestures followed a goal.

The players had undergone, it seems, a “transference of emotion,” Dr. Pepping and his colleagues wrote. Emotions such as happiness and confidence are known to be contagious, with one person’s excitement sparking rolling biochemical reactions in onlookers’ brains.

In the shootouts, he says, each player almost certainly had experienced a shared burst of oxytocin, and in the rush of positive feeling, had shot better.

It is difficult, however, to directly quantify changes in oxytocin levels during sports, largely because of practical logistics. Few teams (or referees) will willingly pause games or celebrations after a thrilling play in order for scientists to draw blood.

But there are hints that physical activity, by itself, may heighten production of oxytocin. In a 2008 study, distance runners had significantly higher bloodstream levels of oxytocin after completing an ultramarathon than at the start.

More telling, in a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, male prairie voles that exercised by running on wheels over six weeks displayed changes in their nervous systems related to increased oxytocin production and bonded rapidly and sturdily with new female cage cohabitants, while unexercised males showed little interest in any particular mate.

“Lots of stresses can trigger oxytocin release, among them exercise,” says William Kenkel, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led the study. He continued that “it stands to reason, then,” that such exercise-related oxytocin release “could facilitate social bonding.”

What this means for competitive athletes is that, in unexpected ways, every game or race may be a kind love match. And that’s good, Dr. Pepping says.

“In any social setting that requires some form of social interaction, be it cooperation, trust or competition, we require social information to guide our behavior and a nervous system and associated brain chemicals that are sensitive to this social information,” he said. A player needs to accurately scrutinize the body language of his or her opponents and teammates in order to gauge how they will respond during the next play, he points out. They also generally benefit from a tug of fellow feeling toward teammates, their “in-group,” and antagonism toward the other team or competitors, the “out-group.”

Oxytocin facilitates the ability to read other people’s emotions, and it deepens bonds between group members and heightens suspicion of and antagonism toward those outside the group, Dr. Pepping says.

It is also believed, as blood and brain levels rise, to encourage gloating.

So oxytocin is almost certainly an essential, if unacknowledged, player in most competitions.

But people differ in how much oxytocin they produce and in how their bodies respond to the hormone, a situation that has not, to date, been considered when judging athletes and their potential, Dr. Pepping points out, or when planning training routines. “Performance is not simply a matter of physique and strength” or of technique, he says. “It is important to start taking social emotions seriously,” he says, “and in particular those linked to positive emotional experiences.”

Encourage athletes to celebrate openly after a big play or new personal record (within the bounds of what referees will tolerate, of course). High-five often. Even gloat. “A healthy degree of gloating,” prompted by squirts of oxytocin, “could well be associated with and feed an athlete’s self-confidence,” Dr. Pepping says.

Athletes, by the way, aren’t the only group affected by oxytocin in a sports setting, “Sports fans, too, experience spurts of oxytocin release,” Dr. Pepping says, including the half-hearted. “Even when you don’t much like sports,” he says, watching others high-five and leap about the living room after their favored team scores will lead “your body to release oxytocin.” At that moment, we are all a fervent Bears or Giants or Oklahoma City Thunder fan, whatever we might think, in our more sober moments, about that James Harden trade.

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Airlines’ On-Time Performance Rises

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Delta Air Lines employees monitor ground traffic from a tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

ATLANTA — Next time you dawdle at the duty-free store or an airport bar, thinking you have a few more minutes until your flight is set to go, know this: the plane’s doors might have already closed.

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

A customer checking her bag. Delta installed bag check-in computers on boarding ramps.

There is a lot to complain about in air travel, particularly during the holiday season, with seats and overhead bins filled to capacity and the airlines charging fees for everything from a few inches of extra leg room to a bite to eat. But there is a nugget of good news. The number of flights leaving, and arriving, on time has improved significantly in recent years.

That is partly the result of the airlines flying fewer flights. But it is also because some airlines are focusing more on getting their planes out of the gate on schedule.

“There has been a lot of focus on improving performance across the industry,” said Peter McDonald, United’s chief operations officer. With carry-on space at a premium, he said passengers are also eager to board early. “There’s not a lot of hanging out at the bar until the last minute anymore.”

John Fechushak, Delta Air Lines’ director of operations in Atlanta, compared the daily task to “putting together a puzzle with different pieces every day.”

Here is a sampling of what Delta, for instance, looks at each day for each flight. How many minutes did it take for a plane to reach its gate after landing? Was the cabin door opened within three minutes? How soon were bags loaded in the hold? Did boarding start 35 minutes before takeoff? Were the cabin doors closed three minutes ahead of schedule?

So far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule, the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation, which compiled figures through September. But that average belies a wide range of airline performances.

Hawaiian Airlines, helped by good weather for much of the year, topped the rankings, with 95 percent of flights leaving on time. At US Airways, 89 percent of departures were on time in that period, while Delta had 87 percent.

The biggest laggard this year has been United, which is struggling with its merger with Continental Airlines. The carrier has had three major computer problems this year, including two that crashed the airline’s passenger reservation system, stranding thousands of travelers and causing significant delays and cancellations. Its on-time departure rate, as a result, was 76 percent this year, the industry’s lowest.

American Airlines, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings and has been dealing with contentious labor relations, has also performed poorly. It delayed or canceled hundreds of flights in recent months after pilots called in sick or reported more mechanical problems. The airline also canceled scores of flight after seats were improperly bolted on some of its planes. As a result, nearly 40 percent of American’s flights were late in September.

Government statistics, however, do not provide the full picture: smaller carriers, like ExpressJet and SkyWest Airlines, which operate regional flights for Delta, United and US Airways, generally have lower on-time performance than their partners.

On-time statistics also vary widely by month, with the worst months in August and January, when summer storms, holiday travel or winter weather cause more disruptions. There are also single events that throw off the airlines: statistics, for instance, will be skewed for October by Hurricane Sandy, which shut down air travel through much of the East Coast and caused more than 19,000 flight cancellations.

Carriers have strong incentives to get planes out on time. Airlines now operate schedules that leave little wiggle room. Airplanes typically fly to several places every day, so any delayed flights, especially early in the day, can cascade through the system like falling dominoes and bedevil flight planners all day. Airlines often have to burn more fuel to try to make up for lost time, or make new arrangements for passengers who miss connections.

Airlines have long padded flight times to make up for congestion at airports or delays caused by air traffic controllers. Even so, passengers still expect their flight to take off and land at the time printed on their ticket.

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Israel, Hamas keep up attacks as talks continue in Egypt

GAZA CITY — As negotiators worked on a tenuous cease-fire deal, Israel and Hamas pounded each other for a sixth day and anger rose in the Gaza Strip over the increasing number of casualties.

Hopes for a truce grew Monday night when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened Cabinet members to discuss the details of what was said to be a multiphase, multiyear cease-fire agreement.

Officials in Egypt, where the talks were underway, expressed cautious optimism. Arab League leaders and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was visiting the region, were trying to help negotiate a deal. The White House said President Obama, who is visiting Asia, called Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Monday.

Israel is seeking assurances from Egypt that Hamas will halt rocket fire into Israel and not be allowed to rebuild the weapon caches that Israel has destroyed in recent days. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, wants an end to the land and sea blockade that has crippled its economy, and to targeted killings of its leaders by Israel.

Any sort of agreement must overcome huge obstacles. Israel views Hamas as a terrorist organization and the Islamist militant group refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Even if the two don't alter those stances, any internationally endorsed truce would usher in a new phase in their relationship. Previously Israel and Hamas have refused direct negotiations, occasionally reaching informal agreements brokered through intermediaries, such as last year's deal to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

There are sizable risks for both sides, but also opportunities, said Doron Avital, a lawmaker with Israel's centrist Kadima party and a former commander of an elite military unit.

Hamas would win some of the international legitimacy it craves, but it would also need to moderate its behavior, just as the Palestine Liberation Organization did after signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993.

"It might elevate the status of Hamas, but that will also mean that Hamas will have to play realpolitik," Avital said. "It can't stay a terrorist organization forever. There's an interesting potential here."

Heated comments by Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal during a Cairo news conference Monday underscored the level of animosity. He called Netanyahu a "child killer" and "murderer."

"It is Netanyahu who asked for a truce," Meshaal said. "Gazans don't even want a truce."

For Israel, besides gaining an end to rocket attacks from Gaza, a deal might start the process of encouraging Hamas to become more moderate. And if Egypt guarantees an agreement, it would be directly invested in keeping Hamas unarmed.

With no cease-fire in place, Israel has massed soldiers and armor along the Gaza border in preparation for a possible invasion. But ground fighting would almost certainly lead to more Israeli and Palestinian casualties, and voices on both sides have cautioned against it.

Some said the negotiations may have led to an uptick in violence in recent days, as each side attempts to intimidate the other before a truce is called.

Palestinian casualties were relatively low in the first days of the conflict, but have increased as Israel's air campaign hit targets in more populated areas. On Monday, Israel attacked the Sharouk communications building in Gaza City where it said four senior members of the Islamic Jihad militant group were meeting.

Among the dead was Ramez Harb, a Palestinian journalist. Israel said he was a legitimate target because he served in the information department of Islamic Jihad.

Hamas' Health Ministry said 107 people had been killed in Gaza, including more than two dozen children. At least 850 people had been wounded.

Three Israelis have died in the barrage of rockets from Gaza and a dozen have been wounded, including three on Monday. An additional 135 rockets were fired Monday, pushing the total over the last week to more than 1,000. Hamas has fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time.

The White House said Obama, in his conversation with Morsi, emphasized that the rocket fire into Israel must end.

In a somber sign of the climbing death toll, hundreds of Gazans crowded around the Shifa Hospital morgue Monday morning in a familiar ritual: collecting the bodies of loved ones.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 20

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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International Emmys honor Lear, Alda, South American shows

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Television legend Norman Lear and veteran actor Alan Alda received special honors at the International Emmy Awards on Monday, while programming from South America dominated the competition, with Argentina and Brazil each winning two Emmys.

Lear, best known as creator of the ground-breaking 1970s hit comedy “All in the Family,” which premiered during a time of social upheaval and tackled issues such as race and women’s rights, said “the world will, and needs to, come together through the arts” as he accepted the honor.

The producer and writer received a special 40th anniversary Founders Award from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, as did Alda, star of the long-running Korean-war set comedy, M*A*S*H* about doctors on the front lines.

Alda paid tribute to “the men and women in the hospital tents,” referring to real-life medical personnel who struggle to treat war injured, who he noted usually go unmentioned at award shows.

“Glee” creator Ryan Murphy received the annual International Founders Award, which was presented by Oscar-winner Jessica Lange, a star of his current series “American Horror Story.”

Argentina won both acting categories, with honors going to actress Cristina Banegas for the dramatic series “Television x La Inclusion,” in which she plays the mother of an ailing child waging battle with health insurers; while Dario Grandinetti picked up the best actor award for his performance as a racist taxi driver in the same series.

It marked the first time both honors were won by actors from the same program.

Brazil scored wins for comedy series for “The Invisible Woman,” while “The Illusionist” was named outstanding telenovela.

In bestowing its prizes, the Emmys, which honor television produced outside the United States, extended their reach after years of domination and even sweeps by the United Kingdom, which this year won two, for best TV movie or miniseries “Black Mirror” and best documentary “Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die.”

France, Germany and Australia each won one Emmy.

France took the best drama series prize for “Braquo season 2,” while Germany’s “Song of War” won for outstanding arts programming. The Australian franchise of the adventure competition “The Amazing Race” won the award for non-scripted, or reality, television.

The International Emmy directorate award went to Korean Broadcasting System president and CEO Dr. Kim In-Kyu.

Presenters at the ceremony, hosted by recently retired talk show host Regis Philbin, also included Victor Garber, Donnie Wahlberg, Cheyenne Jackson, Telenovela actress Edith González, German TV personalities Joko and Klaas and Indian actress Prerna Wanvari.

(Editing by Chris Michaud and Todd Eastham)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

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