Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/282426226?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, February 4, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
How US military can be 'band of brothers and sisters'
IDF
Arielle Werner, 21, originally of Minnetonka, Minn., is a combat soldier with Israel's co-ed Caracal Battalion. "Women in combat can only bring good things," she said. "Two halves of a whole together can only be good."
By F. Brinley Bruton, Staff Writer, NBC News
Even before she moved to Israel, Minnesota-born Cpl. Arrielle?Werner was certain she possessed what it took to fight on the front lines.?
"I realized that I couldn't be the passive Minnesotan," said the 21-year-old member of Israel's?majority female Caracal Battalion, a combat unit which patrols the volatile border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.?"I knew this was the place for me.?My friends back in the States are shocked ? now I?m the wild combat soldier."
The self-described "peace keeper of the family" said she is prepared to "give everything" on the battlefield.?
That's the sort of gung-ho attitude that military brass appreciate in any soldier -- but it isn't an attitude many expect from a woman.
There have long been barriers to women?at war, never mind those assigned to fight at the tip of the spear. But the U.S. government's announcement on Jan. 24?that it was dropping?its ban on women in combat units changed everything. (While not officially in combat units, American women have long served side-by-side with male?service-members -- in fact, 152 women died while being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Despite living in a country "where some still think women should stay in the kitchen," Werner feels accepted by male colleagues.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's decision to lift the 20-year ban on women serving in combat will open some 237,000 combat-related positions to women. Initially, women will be assigned to combat communications, logistics and drivers. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
"There is a little bit of a glass ceiling (but) ... you see women every day getting higher and higher," said Werner, who is originally from Minnetonka, Minn. "As long as you want to succeed and want to get stronger ? you?re able to handle everything."
While many worry whether society has the stomach to accept women being killed, and being killers, Werner is in no doubt about her place on the battlefield. ?And she doesn't mince words about her fellow females in the co-ed Caracal Battalion.
"These girls are tough," she said.
Werner, who has been on stationed on the border since October, admitted that she has noticed differences between the sexes.
"Guys are able to really to put a tough face on things (while) girls really take time to put emotion into something," she added.?"Women in combat can only bring good things. Two halves of a whole together can only be good."
Not practical or not relevant?
As the U.S. military implements its?new and controversial policy ahead of a January 2016 deadline, it will be seeking lessons from Israel and the handful of other countries that currently do not bar women from front-line combat. They include all of Scandinavia, Australia, Eritrea, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Korea, Poland and Romania.
Despite examples set by these countries, one of the biggest worries remains that integration will undermine the essential cohesion of the so-called band of brothers that has long defined the?camaraderie?among fighting men.
"(In the British military) the argument always comes down to the pure practicalities of the effectiveness of the unit rather than if a woman can't do it," said Amyas Godfrey, a former infantry officer and associate fellow at British security think tank the?Royal United Services Institution (RUSI).
Atef Safadi / EPA, file
Israeli female soldiers take positions during clashes with Palestinian protesters from the West Bank village of Nabi Salah on Dec. 28.
The United Kingdom is almost alone among Western European countries in not allowing women into?front-line?combat roles.
"It comes down to 18-to-22-year-old boys not being able to ignore the fact that there is a woman in their midst," he said. Integrating combat units and concentrating on making space for women also "doesn't fit with the practicality of closing with and killing the enemy," he said.
Norwegian Brigadier Odin Johannessen, who served in Bosnia and Afghanistan and commanded military units for 12 years, disagreed with the idea that men and women could not be trained to serve together.
"In mixed units, what is most important is to become a soldier," said the 51-year-old who formerly ran the Norwegian Army Academy in Oslo. "That you are a good soldier tends to be the most prized factor of all, if you are a male or female doesn?t matter."
"It's called a band of brothers. I would rather rephrase it to a band of brothers and sisters," he added.?
Johannessen's exposure to military women colored the rest of his career.
"My first day in the military I met Sgt. Bente Karlsen and she has been present in my mind for my entire service for the professional way she led us," he said. ?
Karlsen had the essential ability to convey instructions and orders, but also clearly cared about the young men under her command, Johannessen said.?
"She was a brilliant sergeant?and showed me that it matters not if you are male of female," he said.?
Norway has no official restrictions on women joining any of its?operational?units, although no women are members of its special forces. Nine percent of combat roles in Norway are made up of women, and the?armed forces' aim to increase that the proportion of females in military positions to 15 percent.
'Masculine warrior culture'
With its "no-exclusion policy," Canada is also recognized internationally as one of the few militaries to have officially removed all barriers to women. Canadian women have served and died on the front line in Afghanistan, and make up four percent of the roles in Canada's so-called combat arms divisions, and 14.8 percent of military roles overall.?
Getty Images, file
Canadian Master Corporal Tera Avey of Edmonton, Alberta, a mother of two and one of three female combat soldiers, wakes up on March, 2002 in the rocky Shahi Kot mountains in Afghanistan. Hundreds of American and Canadian troops were lifted into the mountainous region at high altitude to search and destroy Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
Karen Davis, a gender integration expert for Canada's armed forces, acknowledges?that women have to adapt to the "masculine warrior culture" of combat units.
But when Canadian men and women were sent to fight on the front lines in Afghanistan, fears that women's presence would hurt all-important unity did not bear out, she said.
"What we learned when we went into Afghanistan is that Canadian soldiers are trained to do a job, no matter if they were men or women," Davis said, adding that proper and rigorous training before deployment helped make this happen.
Whether women can or should be treated and tested differently from their male counterparts is at the heart of any discussion on how to integrate military operations, especially front-line combat troops.
In Israel, where women have formed part of the military since before the founding of the state and face?conscription, the training process "accepts differences between men and women and just deals with them," according to Capt. Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the?Israel Defense Forces.
"Everybody comes in with their own baggage and?physiological?differences," he added.
Johannessen, for his part, advises trainers and commanders to not give women under their command special treatment.?
"Say there are two females in the unit. If you want to do it wrong, pay special attention to them," he said. ?
To this end,?gender-neutral physical standards?are also essential, he said.
According to Davis, Canada's success at integrating women also came about as a result of a rigorously enforced non-fraternization policy. And the onus for making sure relationships don't happen lies not just on the women, but also the men throughout the chain of command, she says.
But beyond policies and rules, Norway's Johannessen says that more women make militaries better and smarter.
Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
View images of the women deployed as the second Female Engagement team in Afghanistan
"Men and women are looking at a problem from different positions," he said. "Having the?possibility?for a different view is many times better."
While integrating women into combat can be down to well-thought-out polices, effective leadership and rigorous training -- natural attributes for any well-run military organization -- an important lesson is that change will most likely not come quickly or implemented uniformly.
Gender integration expert?Davis?admits that even her own thinking changed radically from the time she joined an all-female land-bound unit in the Canadian Navy in 1978. At the time, she agreed that women did not belong in many roles in the military. But in 1985 that changed: Davis was asked to be one of two women to go to sea for 12 days on a formerly all-male ship.
"I came back questioning everything," Davis said. "I had joined and completely accepted everything I had been told, but in fact none of it was rational, it could all be dismantled."?
Related:
Female veterans cheer new era: 'It's about time!'
Women in the infantry? Forget about it, says female Marine officer
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Harvard: Dozens disciplined over exam cheating
BOSTON (AP) ? Harvard University said Friday it issued academic sanctions against approximately 60 students who were forced to withdraw from school for a period of time in a cheating scandal that involved the final exam in a class on Congress, drawing criticism from a high-profile alumnus.
The school implicated as many as 125 students in the scandal when officials first addressed the issue last year.
The inquiry started after a teaching assistant in a spring semester undergraduate-level government class detected problems in the take-home test, including that students may have shared answers.
In a campus-wide email Friday, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith said the school's academic integrity board had resolved all the cases related to the cheating probe.
He said "somewhat more than half" of the cases involved students who had to withdraw from the college for a period of time.
Harvard said that the length of a student's withdrawal period is usually from two to four terms.
Of the cases left, about half the students got disciplinary probation. The rest weren't disciplined.
Some athletes became ensnared, including two basketball team co-captains whom the school scratched from its team roster in the wake of the cheating investigation.
Past reports in The Harvard Crimson also linked football, baseball and hockey players to the scandal.
Smith's said in Friday's email that the school wouldn't discuss specific student cases. A school spokesman, citing student privacy, also wouldn't say if any athletes had withdrawn or say which teams might have been affected.
The dean said a school committee is working on recommendations to strengthen a culture of academic honesty and promote ethics in scholarship.
"This is a time for communal reflection and action," he wrote. "We are responsible for creating the community in which our students study and we all thrive as scholars."
Staples founder Thomas Stemberg, a Harvard graduate whose son is a student, on Friday criticized the school's handling of the probe.
"If you challenge the entire faculty at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Law School to come up with a process that took more time, cost more money, embarrassed more innocent students, and vindicated guilty faculty ... that could not have outdone the process that took place," he said.
Stemberg, a supporter of Harvard's basketball team, knows some of the students caught up in the scandal and his son knows others.
He wrote a complaint letter to Harvard's president in early January claiming that the professor who taught the government class changed the rules after several exams in which "open collaboration" was encouraged.
He alleged that for the take-home exam in question, instructions to students said they couldn't collaborate with professors, teaching fellows "and others."
"If the message was so clearly expressed, why did some of the teaching fellows go over the exam in open session ... If they did not get the message, could one expect the students to understand it?"
Stemberg went on to say that while some students "went too far, literally cutting and pasting their answers," others only wrote answers from notes "derived in the collaborative atmosphere the class encouraged."
The class was known as "Introduction to Congress," and widely seen on campus as an easy way to get a good grade.
Harvard Undergraduate Council President Tara Raghuveer said Friday that the cheating investigation has been a hot topic on campus for months. She said some students started the new school year without knowing if they'd be allowed to finish it because of the lengthy period of time the probe took.
The 20-year-old junior also said there are a lot of questions about whether the take-home exam's instructions were clear enough when it came to expectations about group work. She said both students and professors are being careful to discuss collaboration policies now.
Raghuveer also said the school community should make an effort to embrace the students who withdrew for disciplinary reasons when they come back to campus.
"The students who are implicated in this scandal from last spring still need to be recognized as members of our community ... They shouldn't feel alienated from Harvard," she said. "This was an unfortunate incident. Students are being punished accordingly."
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Lebanese troops clash with gunmen; 3 killed
BEIRUT (AP) ? A Lebanese police official says at least three people have been killed and 10 others wounded in clashes between the army and gunmen in a northeastern town near the border with Syria.
The official says those killed include several Lebanese army soldiers who were ambushed by the gunmen in the town of Arsal. He declined to give further details and spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
A senior Lebanese army officer says clashes were under way with gunmen in the area.
Local TV stations say the troops were ambushed Friday after they detained a fugitive in the area.
Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town, are known to be sympathetic to the Syrian opposition, and arms smuggling into Syria is widespread in the area.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lebanese-troops-clash-gunmen-3-killed-143610716.html
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17lbs lost, lower blood pressure & a new healthy life: Breanne's ...
We re gearing up to kick off our Feb Bootcamps and Zumba on Feb 4th (make sure to grab your spot!) so let?s get super inspired and positive in the ?month of love? by celebrating an awesome weightloss and fitness success story from? one of our Calgary chicks, Breanne from our Calgary Beddington Heights Bootcamp
BEFORE: The Beautiful Breanne
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Breanne is an awesome inspiration to all chicks. After a health scare with high blood pressure, she took on livin la vida FIT CHICK with gusto and the results speak for themselves!? Breanne has lost an awesome 17lbs and 6 inches, changed her body, her diet and most important her health for the long haul (livin la vida FIT CHICK does a body good!)
AFTER: The fiercer, fitter, even more fab Breanne!
Now let?s let Breanne take it away and share with you her story?.way to go chick!
1. What made you decide to join FIT CHICKS
I had been physically inactive all my life, but I worked as a server for seven years while I put myself through university and got some physical activity that way. After I finished school and got a job in my field I started putting on weight and was completely sedentary most days. One day I took my dog for a walk on Nose Hill (in Calgary) and realized I needed to stop and take a break three times to get up the hill. Later that week I checked my blood pressure and it was in the high range after years of having low blood pressure. It was then I decided I needed to make a real change. I had tried to exercise before at home or by joining a gym to lose weight, and I had always quit after several weeks. I wanted to take a class that would make me work hard and hold me accountable for showing up. Fit Chicks looked like a great choice so I signed up right away.
2. How did FIT CHICKS help you in reaching your goals? What have your results been like since joining bootcamp?
Before when I had tried to lose weight I?d always focused on the number of the scale and would give up after a few weeks when I didn?t lose much weight. This time I decided to focus more on increasing my strength and physical endurance and less on pounds dropped.
My goal in the beginning was to outdo myself on my second fitness test. After one month I noticed a huge improvement at my next fitness test, which was really encouraging. Since then I have continued to increase my endurance and strength. I started with three pound weight and I am now up to five. I started being able to only do ten pushups at a time on my knees to being able to actually do some from my toes. I also noticed a large improvement in my balance and flexibility. I have much more energy now too. I used to drink 2-3 cups of coffee and day and I?m now down to only one in the morning. While I wasn?t focusing as much on the number on the scale, since joining Fit Chicks I?ve lost 17 pounds and 6 inches off my body!
3. What is your fave FIT CHICKS workout? Which exercises do you love to hate?
I enjoy squats, push-ups and plank. My favorite love to hate exercises are the ones that aren?t always the most enjoyable at the time but that work your body very hard, in particular tabatas and 8 steps to fabulousness. My chick sergeant Amber mixes things up every class and always keeps it interesting:)
4. Physically and/or emotonally, what has been the biggest change that you have noticed in yourself?
I feel like I have developed a healthy lifestyle that I can maintain for the rest of my life. I also feel like for the first time I have been able to stick to something and see the benefits. Overall, I feel much stronger, energetic, happier, and my blood pressure is now 120/80.
5. In terms of nutrition, what changes did you make? What helped you keep on track?
I try to plan out what I am going to eat every day. I focus on eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and protein. I find making sure I always pack my lunch, and cooking multiple servings of dinner for later, keeps me from slipping and eating fast food.
6. What would be your advice to a chick looking to change her health but is too scared?
Before my first class I was nervous that I wouldn?t be able to keep up. But once I got there my Chick sergeant Amber was great with providing modifications to all exercises and all the other chicks were really nice and friendly. There are modified versions of every move so people at every level are challenged and able to keep up. Amber is great at motivated and encouraging everyone in the class to do their best. I would recommend this class to a girlfriend because I always leave class feeling like I got an amazing work-out and I never regret coming to class.
Breanne, we are beyond proud of you and your hard work?it is so inspiring to all chicks that starting (or already started!) living la vida FIT CHICK that they can make healthy changes too. Thanks for allowing us to help along your journey, sharing your story with us and keep up the fabulous work!
Make today fabulous xo
FIT CHICKS XO
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Saturday, February 2, 2013
Bright Screens Could Delay Bedtime
See Inside Using a tablet or computer in the late evening disrupts the body's melatonin production
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Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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If you have trouble sleeping, laptop or tablet use at bedtime might be to blame, new research suggests. Mariana Figueiro of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her team showed that two hours of iPad use at maximum brightness was enough to suppress people's normal nighttime release of melatonin, a key hormone in the body's clock, or circadian system. Melatonin tells your body that it is night, helping to make you sleepy. If you delay that signal, Figueiro says, you could delay sleep. Other research indicates that ?if you do that chronically, for many years, it can lead to disruption of the circadian system,? sometimes with serious health consequences, she explains.
The dose of light is important, Figueiro says; the brightness and exposure time, as well as the wavelength, determine whether it affects melatonin. Light in the blue-and-white range emitted by today's tablets can do the trick?as can laptops and desktop computers, which emit even more of the disrupting light but are usually positioned farther from the eyes, which ameliorates the light's effects. The team designed light-detector goggles and had subjects wear them during late-evening tablet use. The light dose measurements from the goggles correlated with hampered melatonin production.
On the bright side, a morning shot of screen time could be used as light therapy for seasonal affective disorder and other light-based problems. Figueiro hopes manufacturers will ?get creative? with tomorrow's tablets, making them more ?circadian friendly,? perhaps even switching to white text on a black screen at night to minimize the light dose. Until then, do your sleep schedule a favor and turn down the brightness of your glowing screens before bed?or switch back to good old-fashioned books.
This article was originally published with the title Bright Screens Could Delay Bedtime.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=fa4f12ed4b3c78519abc3eb117832b4f
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