A slice-of-life roleplay?

I know for a fact that there are a lot of romance roleplays out there right now. Most of them, however, have to do with fantasy and situations that include mythical happenings. While I do enjoy these, at this moment I'm not interested in something like that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm looking for a slice-of-life romantic 1x1 roleplay.
I have several ideas which you can see below, though I'm not limiting it to only those choices.
Since I myself am female and prefer writing for female characters, I'd like for someone, regardless of their gender, who will play a male character.
Obviously this person should be comfortable with romance at its finest and should be an adept writer in general.

If you're interested, please contact me either through this topic or by personal message.
Thanks!

---

The following are my ideas. I'm keeping them brief so not to limit their potentials.
HIGHSCHOOL RELATED
childhood friends
rivals
rich boy and maid/rich girl and butler
rich boy and poor girl
friends with benefits
girl pretending to be a guy in an all boys academy
chef and chef's assistant
arranged marriage
boss and employee

I'm also open to roleplays that are based off of mangas/animes/movies/TV shows.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/00bqeoifYKo/viewtopic.php

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Daily App Deals: Get Camera ZOOM FX for Android for Only 10? in Today's App Deals [Deals]

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale.

The Best

Camera ZOOM FX (Android Market) Previously $4.99, now 10?. Camera ZOOM FX for Android is a powerful camera app with optical and digital zoom capability up to 6x. Features include the ability to take pictures through voice activation and post processing straight from your device with over 90 different effects. Get it for 10?.

Free

iOS

The Rest

Android

• Star Chart | Android Market | Previously $3.23, now 10?

Windows

Mac

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/wF1N_HmVLnA/daily-app-deals-get-camera-zoom-fx-for-android-for-only-10-in-todays-app-deals

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Lookout, Siri! Google Buys Clever Sense (NewsFactor)

Apple's Siri voice-recognizing intelligent agent has been one of the key drivers of iPhone 4S sales, and the industry expects Siri to begin showing up in other products from the company. Now, Google has taken another step toward its own intelligent agent for Android devices, with the purchase of Clever Sense, a company that makes the Alfred personal assistant.

Deal terms have not been made public. Alfred is a personal recommendation agent for restaurants, bars and clubs, available for both iOS and Android. He provides curated recommendations consistent with the user's interests, physical location and current activity. The app learns over time, based on the user's ratings of his suggestions and additional data.

Clever Sense Platform

Alfred uses the Clever Sense Platform, which the company describes as curating "the real world by harvesting and sifting through the vast amount of information on the Web," and then making in-context recommendations, based on time, place, and intent.

The company said the platform consists of two engines, the Extraction Engine and the Serendipity Engine.

The Extraction Engine leverages natural language processing, statistical machine learning, and data mining algorithms to process large amounts of unstructured, crawled data. This engine learns concepts about physical items in the real world, which become the basis for the Interest Graph, and social interactions like check-ins, likes, and ratings are used to enhance and to determine similarities in the Graph.

The Serendipity Engine uses real-time machine learning algorithms and intelligent agent architecture to incorporate a user's anonymous interest profile and contextual factors, such as time, location, intent, or social context, in conjunction with the Graph. This, the company said, helps to determine a user's interests and preferences based on the user's choices in the app, as well as interests indicated via Facebook or Twitter. Clever Sense said that the interest data is anonymous, to ensure privacy.

'Way a Person Talks To a Person'

Alfred has some natural-language recognition ability, but does not have Siri's facility with language, nor can Alfred respond in a virtual conversation. Alfred is also a standalone app, while Siri is integrated with the 4S's address book, calendar and data from other iPhone apps.

While Alfred is designed primarily for bars, restaurants and clubs, the Silicon Valley-based operation, which now becomes part of Google's local services division, has much bigger targets in mind. One possible enhancement is to make recommendations on deals, such as those from Groupon and Living Social. Future targets also include entertainment and other kinds of local activities.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said the Google acquisition marks another step in reaching a state of interaction with devices that "approximates the way a person talks to a person." This involves intelligent, context-based responses as well as natural-language interaction, he said, adding that he expected Google to integrate more complete language interaction with the Clever Sense platform into "a Siri-like interface."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111214/bs_nf/81374

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China vows crackdown on leaders of village revolt (AP)

BEIJING ? China's government has vowed to crack down on the leaders of a revolt in a southern village and investigate local officials over land seizures at the heart of the residents' unhappiness.

The protests in Guangdong province are part of a growing trend of confrontation between Chinese and their government over the seizure of land for business development projects. Residents in Wukan village have complained that their farmland was sold by local officials to developers to build factories without their consent.

Wu Zili, acting mayor of Shanwei city, told reporters Wednesday that strong measures would be taken against Wukan villagers who instigated others to create trouble and damage public property, according to the China News Agency.

The mayor promised to investigate village officials for wrongdoing and to impose a temporary freeze on the development of the village's farmland until a majority of villagers are satisfied with the conditions of the land transfer.

The residents have essentially taken over the fishing village of 20,000 people after officials either fled from earlier protests, absconded with the money from land sales or were fired, according to various accounts.

Problems in Wukan date back to September, when hundreds of villagers angered by the land dispute smashed buildings and clashed with police. In the months that followed, villagers have submitted petitions and sought meetings with higher level officials.

The current unrest started about six days ago when police started taking away key village representatives. Villagers fought back, blockading the roads with tree trunks and barriers to prevent police from entering.

About five days ago, police started blocking roads leading to Wukan and prevented food from being transported in, villagers reached by phone have said.

On Sunday, Xue Jinbo, a man accused of participating in the September land protest, died in police custody, further angering residents, who suspected he was beaten. Chinese media reported that local police and provincial authorities said Xue died of cardiac failure.

With a booming economy, demand for land to build factories and housing complexes has soared. Land disputes have grown apace, becoming one of the leading causes of the tens of thousands of large-scale protests that hit China every year.

Around Wukan village and in much of the rest of Guangdong province, conflicts have been intense because the area is among China's most economically developed, pushing up land prices.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_re_as/as_china_village_riot

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U.S. leaps ahead, Europe debt woes touch Asia (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? U.S. jobless claims on Thursday fell to a 3-1/2-year low and a survey showed New York factories picked up speed this month, bucking gloomy economic trends set by Europe and Asia.

Stock index futures added to gains after the Labor Department revealed initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 19,000 to 366,000 last week, the lowest level since May 2008.

And a business survey of New York factories provided more evidence that the U.S. economy is weathering the festering sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which is starting to crimp growth in emerging trade partners like China.

While the pace of decline in the euro zone's business economy unexpectedly slowed in December, surveys earlier on Thursday confirmed the region is almost certainly stuck in recession.

That leaves the United States as perhaps the only major Western power currently making a significant contribution to global economic growth.

"The data is all very in line with a modestly improving overall economy here in the United States," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in New Jersey.

"Stability in the U.S. economy is going to be a vital part of stabilizing global GDP. This comes at a very good time."

The New York Federal Reserve's "Empire State" general business conditions index rose to 9.53 from 0.61 the previous month. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a reading of 3.00.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's business activity indicator, another early gauge of private sector activity, is due at 1500 GMT and economists also expect it to rise sharply.

In the euro zone, Markit's flash composite purchasing managers' index (PMI), which corresponds closely with economic growth, rose unexpectedly in December to 47.9 from 47.0 last month.

But it has now lingered below the 50 line that divides growth from contraction for four months.

"(It) reinforces the notion that the euro zone economy is slipping into a mild recession rather than falling off a cliff," said Martin van Vliet, senior economist at ING.

The survey compilers warned against viewing its latest gauge of euro zone business as a turning point, especially since there is still a strong risk the euro zone sovereign debt crisis could spiral out of control.

RESOLUTION NEEDED

EU leaders last week took a historic step towards fiscal union last week, but pressure is building on reluctant euro zone paymaster Germany to take immediate, radical steps to solve the crisis.

A resolution to the crisis is all the more important as its repercussions spread through global economy. China saw its first year-on-year drop in foreign direct investment in 28 months in November.

The HSBC flash manufacturing purchasing managers' index, the earliest indicator of China's industrial activity, rose modestly to 49.0 in December from 47.7 but pointing to a monthly contraction in activity nonetheless.

Most economists gave a cautious welcome to the euro zone PMI data, which measures changes in the activities of thousands of businesses across the euro zone.

"All in all, despite the further pick-up in December, the PMI data still suggest that euro zone real GDP saw a marked contraction in the fourth quarter," said ING's van Vliet.

The Markit Eurozone Composite PMI, which looks at both the manufacturing and services sectors,

Furthermore, only France and Germany were responsible for the upturn in the index, while the euro zone's peripheral economies continued to struggle.

Markit said its data pointed to a quarterly economic decline of 0.6 percent in the euro zone in the final quarter of this year.

That would be twice as deep as the contraction expected by economists in a Reuters poll on Wednesday, which also forecast a 0.2 percent fall in the first three months of the new year.

An escalation of the debt crisis could cause a far steeper contraction next year -- a scenario the Swiss National Bank warned on Thursday could not be ruled out, after holding its exchange rate cap on the franc against the euro for now.

There was one bright note on Thursday. The risk premium on benchmark Spanish bonds fell following a well-received bond auction that raised more than the government had targeted.

(Additional reporting by Aileen Wang and Koh Gui Qing in Beijing, Editing by Ross Finley and Hugh Lawson)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/bs_nm/us_global_economy_wrapup

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The electric mole rat acid test

Research suggests secret of creatures? imperviousness to feeling the burn

Web edition : 2:02 pm

When life gives naked mole rats lemons, the wrinkled, buck-toothed rodents probably don?t care. They are impervious to the sting of acid.

But scientists in Berlin are onto the secret of the social rodents? acid insensitivity. Naked mole rats? acid sensors work just fine, but a protein responsible for relaying messages about acid?s presence to the nervous system is easily blocked by the same positively charged hydrogen ions that lend substances acidity, researchers report in the Dec. 16 Science. The discovery may give researchers clues about where to target drugs that could relieve pain associated with inflammation.

?I?ve been trying to figure out this question in mole rats for a number of years, and the answer has been elusive,? says Thomas Park, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in the study.

It was Park who first got Gary Lewin of the Max Delbr?ck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin interested in studying naked mole rats. Lewin and Ewan St. John Smith, a postdoctoral researcher in Lewin?s lab, led the new research.

Mole rats live in large social groups in burrows underground. The crowded, confined conditions cause carbon dioxide levels to rise to as high as 8 to 10 percent of the air ? a concentration that would cause a person to pass out within five to 10 minutes. High carbon dioxide and low oxygen levels make body tissues acidic, something that is very painful for nearly all mammals. (Inflammation also raises acidity in tissues, producing pain.) If mole rats had not evolved a way to ignore acid the little rodents would be in constant agony, Lewin says.

Most researchers thought the animals? insensitivity to acid probably stemmed from a lack of functional acid sensors in pain nerves, says Harold Zakon, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. ?But there?s a little unexpected kick here,? he says.

Naked mole rats do have fully functional acid sensors. ?To our great surprise they are all there and are even more active and easily opened? than similar acid sensors in mice, Lewin says. ?That left us in a bit of a puzzle.?

Usually when sensors detect acid or other substances, nerve cells change their electrical properties, then fire off an electrical message to the rest of the nervous system. The pain nerves in the naked mole rats change their electrical properties but never send the message, the researchers found.

?It?s as if, in the naked mole rat, acid is acting like a local anesthetic,? says Lewin.

The team traced the missing message to a protein called a sodium channel in the pain nerves. Naked mole rats have a slightly different version of the sodium channel ? named Nav1.7 in most mammals and SCN9A in humans ? than most other mammals, except for cave-dwelling microbats, which also live in chemically challenging environments.

The mole rats and bats have three amino acids near the hole of the doughnut-shaped sodium channel that are negatively charged. Those amino acids apparently attract hole-blocking positively charged protons more strongly than the amino acids found in the human and mouse versions of the protein. When the researchers engineered human cells with the naked mole rat version of the sodium channel, the human cells reacted like the mole rat cells do.

If researchers can figure out how to block the same part of the sodium channel in humans, the result could be a painkiller that takes away pain but doesn?t make people groggy the way many analgesics do now, says Geoffrey Woods, a clinical geneticist at the University of Cambridge in England.

Found in: Genes & Cells

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/336941/title/The_electric_mole_rat_acid_test

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Whistleblower saw monkeys abused, PETA says

By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, released this image that it says shows a monkey with a surgically attached tube at a biomedical lab in Everett, Wash. Experimental chemicals were continuously infused into its veins through the tube, PETA said a whistleblower alleges.

A multinational?biomedical lab was the focus of a federal complaint filed Monday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which?said a whistleblower had come forward with images and accounts of?abuse of test monkeys.

PETA urged the federal Animal Plant and Inspection Service to investigate the U.S. headquarters of?Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, saying it was contacted by "a whistleblower who resigned her position at SNBL in 2010 after working there for several years."?

Shin Nippon's U.S. headquarters, based in Everett, Wash., has yet to respond to msnbc.com's request for comment on the allegations.

Use of animals for testing of new drugs and other medical applications?is allowed in the U.S. but must adhere to the health and safety provisions of the?federal Animal Welfare act.

PETA said the whistleblower had requested anonymity but quoted her as saying that when it came to drawing blood for tests "the monkeys wince, scream, tremble and shake, and try to defend themselves. Eventually, many of the monkeys stop fighting and reacting ? it is like the life is gone from them."

In its complaint that the Animal Welfare Act was violated, PETA?states that the reports by the whistleblower?include:

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, released this image of a monkey with a bruise allegedly taken at a biomedical lab in Everett, Wash. PETA says a whistleblower alleges monkeys were routinely bruised but not treated for injuries.

• "Employees at SNBL used excessive force in their handling of monkeys, particularly when putting monkeys into squeeze cages, wherein a sliding cage wall is pulled forward to restrain the monkey against the front of the cage. Employees would use so much force that monkeys suffered with bloodied noses and bruises to their bodies. Sometimes, the monkeys would suffer broken fingers and toes. Careless workers frequently injured monkeys by slamming the cage doors onto their tails. Some tails would become bent or deformed, and would be left that way, while other tails were broken so badly that they had to be amputated."
• "Many studies at SNBL require that blood be drawn from the animals at frequent intervals?generally, at the following time points after the animal receives the test drug: 1 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute, 15 minute, 30 minute, 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour, 6 hour, 8 hour, 12 hour, 16 hour, 24 hour, 36 hour, 48 hour, and so on. According to the whistleblower, by the 30 minute mark, the animals' veins would have ruptured and for blood draws past this point, veterinary technicians poke and dig into the arm or leg many times to get blood?resulting in much swelling, redness, and bruising."
• "In one set of experiments, monkeys were attached to their cages with a metal tether which was surgically attached to their bodies and, through which ice cold saline solution and test compounds were continuously infused into the monkeys? veins. The monkeys were hooked up in this manner for many months; they would shiver and chatter their teeth non-stop through this time."

PETA also cited fines over the past decade against the lab, as well as an incident where a monkey died when it was left inside its cage while it went through a hot-water cleaning process.

While PETA opposes?any animal testing, even that authorized by the federal law, it pursues?legal action under that law?"to shed light on especially egregious and illegal activity," said PETA's Justin Goodman, who works on lab investigations.

More news and feature stories from msnbc.com:

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/05/9227484-peta-whistleblower-says-monkeys-mistreated-at-drug-lab

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