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herseyhelga46

Concerns over the European debt crisis and jobless claims headed into 2012, Robert Brusca, Fact and Opinion Economics chief economist and Andrew Root, Macquarie Group head of U.S. research weigh in on what investors can expect from the new year.

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So recently, after using a couple of ribs of celery from a fresh stalk for a pot of chili, I was determined to use up the rest of it. My first thought was celery soup. Doing a quick online search, I mostly found various pur?ed versions. I?m sure they?re lovely, but I was in the mood for soup with chunks of stuff in it.

Then I came across a recipe for minestra del sedano, Italian celery soup, posted by my friend Lydia at Soup Chick. It called for about twice the celery I had on hand and fewer other ingredients (no chicken or carrots, for instance). I?m guessing with my tinkering, I?ve actually veered a good distance from true Italian celery soup. But I used up all the celery I had on hand, and we ate well that night. Again, not a holidayworthy meal, but a good one. Happy holidays, everyone. Eat well.

Italian Celery Soup
?Serves 3 to 4

2 tablespoons olive oil
?3 slices of bacon, cut crosswise into matchsticks
?1 medium onion, chopped
?1 large carrot, diced
?1 stalk celery, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (5 to 6 cups)
?2 tablespoons tomato paste
?2 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
?2 cups water (plus more, if needed)
?2 bay leaves
?1 piece of rind from a Parmesan cheese wedge (optional)
?3 boneless skinless chicken thighs, chopped (about 1-1/2 cups)
?1/2 cup uncooked white rice
?salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
?freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a lidded Dutch oven over a medium flame. Add bacon, onion and carrot and toss to combine and coat with oil. Cook until onion begins to soften, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and celery and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, heat broth and water together in a separate pan. (This is a trick I picked up from Lydia?you don?t have to wait for cold or room temperature broth to heat up when added to the soup pot if you do this.) Gradually add hot broth mixture to soup pot and add Parmesan rind and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer soup, covered, for 20 minutes.

Add chicken and rice and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Be generous with the pepper, another tip from Lydia.

Ladle into individual bowls and top with grated Parmesan. Serve with a crusty bread.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/8lCxZdvoQAs/story01.htm

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herseyhelga46

MOSCOW?? A drilling rig with 67 crew on board capsized and sank off Russia's far eastern island of Sakhalin on Sunday while being towed through a storm, leaving more than 50 dead or missing in the icy Sea of Okhotsk.

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Emergency officials said the crew of an icebreaker and tugboat rescued 14 workers alive from the jack-up rig, the 'Kolskaya', which was operated by a Russian offshore exploration firm. They recovered four bodies from the water.

Four of the survivors, suffering from hypothermia, were airlifted by helicopter to land and taken to hospital after the disaster struck at 12:45 p.m. (0145 GMT).

The rest of the crew were missing, 200 km (125 miles) off the coast of remote Sakhalin island. The water temperature was one degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit), giving survivors around 30 minutes before death from freezing, according to maritime and rescue websites.

"The Kolskaya keeled to its side ... and sank within 20 minutes. The depth of the water at the site is 1,042 metres (0.65 miles)," Russia's federal water transport agency said in a statement on its website.

Several rescue crafts and helicopters had been sent to the site to scour the waters for survivors from the rig owned by Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR), a unit of state-owned Zarubezhneft.

"There is no ecological danger. The vessel was carrying the minimum amount of fuel as it was being tugged by two craft," said a spokesman for AMNGR.

But the incident will deal a blow to efforts by Russia, the world's largest energy producer, to step up offshore oil and gas exploration to stave off a long-term decline in onshore production.

The jack-up rig, which has three support legs that can be extended to the ocean floor while its hull floats on the surface, was heading from Kamchatka to Sakhalin when it overturned in stormy winter conditions with a swell of up to 6 metres (19.7 feet).

"(President) Dmitry Medvedev has ordered all necessary assistance be provided to the victims of the drilling platform accident and has ordered a probe into the circumstances of the loss of the platform," the Kremlin said. The Emergencies Ministry said it would work through Sunday night.

"The violation of safety rules during the towing of the drilling rig, as well as towing without consideration of the weather conditions ... are believed to be the cause of the (disaster)," investigators said in a statement on their website.

The 'Neftegaz-55' tugboat, also owned by AMNGR, had been towing the Kolskaya and took part in the search effort, but pulled out after suffering hull damage from the high waves.

The tug, carrying most of the crew rescued from the rig, was taking on water and trying to limp to port. An icebreaker, the 'Magadan', was still at the scene.

The rig, built in Finland in 1985, had been doing work on a minor gas production project in the Sea of Okhotsk for a unit of state-controlled gas export monopoly Gazprom, the company said.

Russia's prize offshore gas and oil fields lie to the northeast of Sakhalin. Two major offshore projects are already producing oil and gas off the island - Sakhalin-1, operated by Exxonmobil and Sakhalin-2, in which Gazprom has a controlling stake.

The disaster is unlikely to seriously affect oil or gas production. AMNGR said the vessel was no longer under contract when it sank.

Operating conditions in the region, explored by Soviet geologists in the 1960s and 1970s, are among the harshest for Russian energy companies.

Winter often lasts 220-240 days in the waters off Sakhalin, where the main companies operating are ExxonMobil, Gazprom, and Royal Dutch Shell. They produce oil and gas, sometimes in icebound conditions, for export largely to Asian markets.

Sakhalin-2, in which Shell and Mitsui also have stakes, produces 10 million tons per year of liquefied natural gas at Russia's only LNG plant in the port of Prigorodnoye for export to Asia, much of it to Japan.

Each tanker of crude oil produced by at the 160,000 barrels-per-day Sakhalin-1 project, operated by ExxonMobil, is escorted by two icebreakers when ice thickness reaches 60 cm (2 feet).

State-controlled Rosneft this year reached a major deal with Exxon to explore for oil and gas in the Kara Sea, to the north of the Russian mainland, a largely unexplored region estimated to hold over 100 billion barrels of oil.

A combination of poor infrastructure and chronic corner-cutting has dealt the country its share of sea disasters, notably the 2000 sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in August 2000, killing all 118 aboard and prompting criticism of the sluggish response.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45714698/ns/world_news-europe/

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herseyhelga46 · ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2011)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2011) ? A group of scientists from United Kingdom (UK), China and United Arab Emirates (UAE) jointly announced the complete sequencing of peregrine and saker falcons genomes at the 2nd International Festival of Falconry held in Al Ain, UAE. The study is a part of Falcon Genome Project, launched and funded by the Environment Agency -- Abu Dhabi (EAD) in this January. The results will enable biologists to better study the basic biology and genetics of falcons and provide new insights into understanding the origin and populations of these species.

Two particular species of birds, peregrine and saker falcons, are widespread but heavily exploited birds of prey that exhibit migratory habit and are popular hunting falcons commonly found in the country. In particular, the saker is the national bird of United Arab Emirate. In the past century, the two falcons have been listed as endangered species with population decline, caused by a wide range of factors including migration obstacles, environmental changes, habitat loss, use of pesticides (e.g. DDT, PCBs), among others. In the late 1990s, the peregrine has been successfully removed from the endangered species list through the increased recovery efforts, but the saker is still facing this challenge.

Since this January, researchers from UK, China and UAE have been working together to conduct the genomic studies of peregrine and saker falcons, aiming to identify the genome sequences of the two species and enhance their future conservation to face the unforeseen challenge of the rapid changing environments and human activities. Abu Dhabi's Falcon Hospital (ADFH) provided the blood samples collected from male specimens of peregrine and saker falcons, and BGI were responsible for sequencing these samples on its large-scale next-generation sequencing platforms and producing high-quality data output. The bioinformatics analysis is conducted by the scientists from the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University (UK) and BGI.

Dr. Ning Li, CEO of BGI Europe, said, "The complete genome sequencing of the two falcons will lay a solid scientific foundation for identifying the origin and populations of falcons and accelerating the selective breeding of high-quality varieties. We believe we will make more breakthroughs in this project to help researchers better protect these endangered species."

"This study will open the door to an unparalleled understanding of falcon biology and help us to manage and conserve wild falcon stocks in the future" said Dr Andrew Dixon, Head of Research at International Wildlife Consultants Ltd (IWC).

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111216112802.htm

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herseyhelga46

JACKSON, Miss. ? A Mississippi cancer clinic doctor who is charged with using old syringes and watered-down chemotherapy drugs now faces a lawsuit that claims a patient contracted HIV from a dirty needle.

Dr. Meera Sachdeva, founder of Rose Cancer Center in Summit, has been held without bond since her arrest in August on charges of diluting drugs and billing Medicaid and Medicare for more chemotherapy than patients actually were given.

The lawsuit claims James Ralph Patterson Sr. went to the now-shuttered clinic for treatment of his brain and lung cancer but ended up getting watered-down drugs and was infected with HIV by an old needle. Patterson died July 3 at the age of 61.

The lawsuit appears to be the first public allegation filed in court that a Rose patient contracted HIV.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/aids/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_cancer_clinic_hiv

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herseyhelga46

MEXICO CITY ? A city in southern Mexico wants to live each moment as if it were the last.

Tourism officials in Tapachula have installed a digital clock to count down the time left before the Dec. 21, 2012, solstice, when some believe the world will end.

The clock starts Dec. 21, a year before the supposed apocalypse.

Chiapas state tourism regional director Manolo Alfonso Pinot said Friday that Mayan priests will perform a ceremony at the nearby archaeological site of Izapa.

Maya experts say the doomsday fears are a misreading of Maya stone inscriptions that mention the date, saying the Mayans only considered it the end of one calendar cycle and the beginning of another.

Pinot said he doesn't believe the world will end, but looks at it as a sort of beginning, in the business sense at least.

"A lot of people know they can fill their body with energy if they come to these exceptional sites," he said. "If people are interested, we have to take advantage of this."

Tapachula, best known as a gritty border town crossed by Central American migrants en route to the United States, is not a popular Mayan tourism destination. But nearby Izapa is a place where many stelae have been found, including the "Tree of Life" stone discovered in the 1950s and thought to convey an ancient Mayan tale.

At Izapa, close to the Tajumulco volcano, Pinot says a Mesoamerican ball court, a carved stone and the throne of the Izapa ruler face a straight line that on Dec. 21, 2012 is expected to align with the planets.

"It is hard to say what you will be able to see that day," he said.

The doomsday theories stem from a pair of tablets that describe the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th period of 400 years, which falls on Dec. 21, 2012.

Experts say the date marks the end of a 5,125-year cycle that began in 3113 B.C., and the start of another.

___

Follow Adriana Gomez Licon on Twitter at http://twitter.com/agomezlicon

Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_apocalypse2012

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herseyhelga46

The Associated Press-GfK Poll on the 2012 election and candidates was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from Dec. 8-12. It is based on landline and cellphone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,000 adults, including 460 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Interviews were conducted with 700 respondents on landline telephones and 300 on cellular phones.

Digits in the phone numbers dialed were generated randomly to reach households with unlisted and listed landline and cellphone numbers.

Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population's makeup by factors such as age, sex, education and race. In addition, the weighting took into account patterns of phone use ? landline only, cell only and both types ? by region.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 4 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled. The margin of sampling error for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is plus or minus 6 percentage points.

There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.

The questions and results are available at http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111214/ap_on_el_pr/us_ap_poll_republicans_method

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herseyhelga46

FILE - This , Sept. 1, 2011, file photo shows"The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond," a 33.19 carat a gift to the actress from Richard Burton at Christie's, in New York. The 33.19-carat diamond ring given to Elizabeth Taylor by actor Richard Burton sold for over $8.8 million at auction in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - This Sept. 1, 2001, file photo shows Elizabeth Taylor's "La Peregrina," an early 16th century pearl, ruby and diamond necklace by Cartier, that was gift from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor, at Christie's, in New York. A pearl known as "La Peregrina" purchased at auction for $37,000 in 1969 by Burton for Taylor reached the world record price Tuesday Dec. 13, 2011 of $11,842,500. It was estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry collection sold for a record-setting $115 million ? including more than $11.8 million for a pearl necklace and more than $8.8 million for a diamond ring given to her by Richard Burton ? at a Christie's auction Tuesday night of memorabilia amassed by the late actress.

The pearl, diamond and ruby necklace, known as "La Peregrina," reached the world record price of $11,842,500. It had been estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million. The price surpassed the previous auction record for a pearl, set in 2007 with the sale of The Baroda Pearls for $7,096,000.

Burton bought the necklace at auction in 1969 for Taylor for $37,000.

Taylor, a screen goddess who also starred in classics such as "Giant," ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," died in Los Angeles in March at age 79. A jewelry lover, she had pieces from some of the most famous names in the jewelry world, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Chopard, in her collection.

The 33.19-carat diamond ring sold for $8,818,500. It had been estimated to sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. The ring was purchased by a private buyer from Asia, according to a Christie's spokesman.

The collection of Taylor's necklaces, earrings, pendants and rings and other gems went on sale Tuesday night in New York.

Among the other high-profile items was a diamond bracelet given to the "National Velvet" and "Cleopatra" actress by singer Michael Jackson, with an estimated sale price of $30,000 to $50,000. It sold for $194,500. All prices include the buyer's premium.

Other sales of Taylor's art, clothing and memorabilia will be held later in the week. Part of the proceeds will go to The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which she established in 1991 to help people living with AIDS.

Taylor's collection of impressionist and modern art is scheduled to go on sale at Christie's in London in February.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-12-14-Elizabeth%20Taylor%20Auction/id-4964523121e146d1b020d2c077962d23

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herseyhelga46

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration has added a senior member of a Lebanese militant group to the list of global terrorists subject to U.S. sanctions.

The State Department says Saudi citizen Saleh al-Qarawi is a high-ranking operative for the Abdullah Azzam Brigades in Lebanon. The group has claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Japanese oil tanker last year and for several rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel.

The move freezes any assets held by al-Qarawi in the United States and bans Americans from doing business with him.

The department said that before moving to Lebanon, al-Qarawi fought American forces in Fallujah, Iraq, and worked alongside killed al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It said al-Qarawi is wanted for extradition by Saudi Arabia for extremist activity.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_terrorism

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herseyhelga46

New Year's Eve stars every big name in Hollywood. We're not kidding: Lea Michele, Josh Duhamel, Ryan Seacrest, Michelle Pfeiffer, Katherine Heigl, Hilary Swank. Seriously, check out the New Year's Eve trailer now.

So the Los Angeles premiere of the romantic comedy was an especially hot ticket last night, in more ways than one.

Two of the studliest actors in the film, Ashton Kutcher and Zac Efron, are featured below in the latest edition of a THG Fashion Face-Off. Both wore a similar colored suit for the occasion, but only one can be chosen as the winner. Vote now. (Editor's note: We apologize, Zac. This will be the last time we ever compare you to Ashton.)

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/new-years-eve-premiere-face-off-ashton-kutcher-vs-zac-efron/

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herseyhelga46

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama revealed a secret crush and Caroline Kennedy crooned to her namesake song on Sunday at the Kennedy Center Honors, which celebrated actress Meryl Streep and singer Neil Diamond.

The annual awards program, which also honored singer Barbara Cook, jazz great Sonny Rollins, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, brought together stars from the stage and screen in a celebration of music, movies, and Broadway shows.

"Right now, somewhere in America, there is a future Kennedy Center honoree - practicing on some phone books, or writing songs to impress a girl, or wondering if she can cut it on the big stage," Obama said at the White House, greeting the winners before the show and noting the importance of the arts.

It turns out the president once fell for Streep, the actress who has been nominated for 16 Academy Awards and won two.

"Anybody who saw 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' had a crush on her," Obama said, joking that he was straying from his prepared remarks.

Of Diamond, Obama said his songs could be heard everywhere from baseball games to children's movies.

"With a voice he describes as being full of gravel, potholes, left turns and right turns, he went on to sell more than 125 million records," Obama said.

The "Sweet Caroline" singer told reporters he would thank Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, for being the namesake of that signature song.

"I'm going to thank her for giving me the title for 'Sweet Caroline,'" Diamond said before the show. "The story really is about my former wife and myself, but it is her name that I used, and I have to thank her for that."

Kennedy, who presided over the evening, referred to Diamond with a line from the tune -- "reaching out, touching me" -- to laughter from the audience. She later joined singer Smokey Robinson and other performers for a rendition of the song, crooning along somewhat awkwardly.

HUMOR, MUSIC

In other crowd-pleasing moments, comedian Stephen Colbert gave a humorous introduction to the music of Ma, who first played for a U.S. president at the age of 7.

"Yo-Yo doesn't just play the cello. He rocks it. He shreds it. He cranks it up and he rips off the knob - metaphorically, of course, because the knobs on a Stradivarius are like a half a million dollars a piece," he said.

Obama said he could learn a thing or two from the cellist.

"Maybe the most amazing thing about Yo-Yo Ma is that everybody likes him," Obama said at the White House, drawing laughter. "You've got to give me some tips."

Actor Bill Cosby introduced the portion of the show dedicated to Rollins, saying the musician's tenor sax became a legend. Rollins, 81, told reporters his award celebrated a uniquely American form of music - jazz.

"America is the home of jazz, it's where we started jazz, and people love jazz all over the world," he told reporters.

Actresses Glenn Close and Patti LuPone joined a lineup of top stage stars that sang a series of songs honoring Cook, who achieved fame with roles in "Candide" and "The Music Man" on Broadway decades ago.

"Thank you, Barbara for all the music - the joys, the longing, the sadness and humor with which you infuse each song," said actor Matthew Broderick who, along with wife Sarah Jessica Parker, addressed the audience about Cook.

This was the 34th version of the Kennedy Center Honors. It will be broadcast by CBS on December 27.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111205/stage_nm/us_usa_kennedy_honors

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herseyhelga46

Click here to read Siri Is Apple's Broken Promise

A long time ago, I made a compact with Apple. "You can control my entire technological life, from my computer to my phone to my stereo. I'll pay premium prices. I'll dive into your product ecosystem, and buy books and music and movies and apps from you. Even though they won't work on devices made by anybody else." More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/fVn3BzWPkp8/siri-is-apples-broken-promise

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herseyhelga46

Copyright ? 2011 National Public Radio?. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Up next, the hidden life of a Hollywood siren.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE HEAVENLY BODY")

WILLIAM POWELL: (as William Whitley) Scientist, mathematician, physicist, bacon-eater, yes, but not astrologer.

HEDY LAMARR: (as Vicky Whitley) Oh, I'm sorry.

POWELL: (as William Whitley) Darling, astronomy and astrology may sound alike, but that's all. Astronomy is a science, astrology, a superstition.

LAMARR: (as Vicky Whitley) But aren't you a little bit intolerant? For thousands of years, astrology has been highly respected.

POWELL: (as William Whitley) Astrology, my love, stinks.

FLATOW: That movie clip is from "The Heavenly Body," and the woman with that lovely Austrian accent is Hedy Lamarr. Her scientist husband is played by William Powell. And while Hedy is playing the stereotypical Hollywood dumb broad in that scene, in real life, she was anything but that. In her spare time, Hedy, the glamorous movie star, was an insatiable inventor. Her most famous invention is called frequency hopping, and is still used today in some wireless technology, including Bluetooth.

You can see her patent up there on our website at sciencefriday.com. Joining me now to talk more about Hedy Lamarr, her life and inventions is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Rhodes. His new book is called "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." He joins us from KQED in San Francisco - from San Francisco. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

RICHARD RHODES: Hi, Ira.

FLATOW: You know, I'm a huge fan of Hedy Lamarr. And for many - as my listeners know, I've been talking about her and her accomplishments for decades. There are movie scripts, right, waiting to be produced. A play called "Frequency Hopping" that was produced. We interviewed the writer and director Elyse Singer back in 2008. You're a Hedy Lamarr fan, too, now, I guess.

RHODES: Yes, absolutely - although, of course, strictly for her scientific bent. You'll find a photo in the frontispiece in the book that I think really shows how extraordinarily beautiful she was.

FLATOW: And she said that was a curse of hers, did she not?

RHODES: She did. She really felt blinded or blocked from people seeing the real person. She would walk into a room, and people would literally stop talking and look at her. But they never got past her face, which is what that little scene here just played indicates, too.

FLATOW: And how did she get - was she always interested in inventions, from a very young age?

RHODES: You know, I think I trace it back to the time she spent with her father, who was a tall, athletic bank director in Vienna, where she was born, and who would - she was his only child. He adored her. They would go on long walks together around the city, and he would explain things to her, technologies. This is how that crane works. This is how that bus works. So in her childhood, she obviously associated the warm feelings she had with her - for her father with this business of technology. And I think that's probably the real source of her interest.

FLATOW: Why do you call it "Hedy's Folly"? What was the folly in her work?

RHODES: Well, I think folly is a word that has several meanings. One of them, of course, is the one we all think of, and that's ironic because of the way the Navy treated her and George Antheil's invention, which was, of course, to throw it into the round(ph) file. But there's another sense of the word folly, which means basically an extravagance. And I think of her inventive side as a kind of rich, extravagant side of a very extravagant woman.

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 if you'd like to talk about Hedy Lamarr. And we'll get into her inventions, and the one that's most famous about having to do with frequency hopping, on SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Richard Rhodes, author of "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." And she was christened that by what - a movie producer, was it?

RHODES: Yes, Max Reinhart, the great Austrian producer-director called her that when she first showed up in one of his movies as an - almost an extra. And by then - I think she was about 16 at the time. She got more beautiful when she moved to the United States and lost some weight, actually. She was a kind of typical plump Austrian teenager, but she was a knockout by the time she made her first movie here.

FLATOW: Yeah. Yeah. She - and the story goes that - you tell it very well in your book. And you debunk a lot of the mythology about her escape from Austria and her husband. And she - you basically say that she always wanted to be a movie star, and she made her way to America. And...

RHODES: Someone said of her, one of the first actors who played with her in a play, that she thought of the United States as some sort of large country surrounding Hollywood, which I think is a pretty good idea of where she was. She'd always dreamed of being a movie star. And the only place you could really do that was, of course, in Hollywood. But she had a disastrous marriage at the age of 20 with the third-richest man in Austria, Fritz Mandel, who was an arms merchant who have factories making bullets and cannon shells and so forth all over Europe. And they lived, of course, a very extravagant life.

But she described it as a golden castle, a golden prison. He was a paranoid man who was sure she was cheating on him with everyone who walked through the room, and she simply felt locked up. Plus, he didn't want her to act. She had acted in a movie that had really made her name as a 19 year-old, where she had had a couple of nude scenes. And that was a scandal in Austria and in the United States, as well. Famously, Fritz is said to have tried to buy up all the copies of this film, which, of course, the people who owned the negatives simply kept making more copies, making a nice living. So...

FLATOW: And - yeah.

RHODES: ...in 1937, she saw her chance and filed for divorce and made her way to London, where she had lots of friends, found out that Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was in town buying up actresses and actors, as it were, on the cheap in the late period of the Depression, and went to see him. He offered her a really bad deal, and she turned him down and walked out - which, I think, is some indication of her self-confidence...

FLATOW: Oh.

RHODES: ...and then contrived to sail to the United States on the Normandie, the same ship that he was returning to the country in, and got herself a much better contract.

FLATOW: And we'll pick up the story, a very interesting story about Hedy Lamarr, with Richard Rhodes, author of the new book "Hedy's Folly." Stay with us. We'll be right back. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. We'll get into her inventiveness right after this break. Stay with us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I am Ira Flatow.

We're talking this hour about the life of movie star and inventor Hedy Lamarr with my guest Richard Rhodes. His new book is called "Hedy's Folly." Our number: 1-800-989-8255.

So let's continue the story. She gets to Hollywood and she becomes a big movie star, but she doesn't go out and partake in all these Hollywood lifestyle parties, does she?

RHODES: Exactly. She doesn't drink, and she doesn't like parties. She's - after all, she's a very bright woman, and she - her idea of a good evening is a quiet dinner party with some intelligent friends. So she has to find some way to occupy her time. And what she does is take up, as a hobby, inventing. She sets aside one of the rooms in her house and puts up a drawing table and all the tools, the right kind of lights. There's an entire wall of technical reference books on one side of the room. And she sets herself keeping busy in these off-hours, trying to come up with new ideas for inventions.

FLATOW: And she goes to - I'm sorry. So she's at a party, and she meets the man who's going to make history with her.

RHODES: She has begun to be very interested in the war, which began, of course, in Europe on the first of September, 1939. She's been following the story, of course, because her country was occupied by Germany, and therefore is part of the Axis empire at this point.

She's particularly interested in the submarine warfare that's going on between the German U-boats and British shipping, because when she went to all these fancy dinner parties with her Austrian husband, he, after all, was talking to German admirals, German officers, German technical specialists about the kind of problems they were having with, for example, torpedoes and submarines. So she knows a lot about this.

And it's particularly interesting to her and horrifying to her in the summer of 1940, when the German U-boats begin torpedoing the ocean liners that are carrying English children out of England to safety in Canada, to get away from the blitz which had begun, the bombing of London and the bombing of England. One ship in particular, in September of 1940, was torpedoed with the loss of the lives of 99 children, and she's horrified. And she thinks: There must be something I, Hedy Lamarr, can do to stop this terrible butchering of children.

And then at this dinner party, just a few weeks later, she meets a young avant-garde composer named George Antheil, who happens, at the age of 18 - this is his technical expertise, from her point of view - to have been an inspector in a bullet factory in the United States during the First World War. Well, as he said later, well, that was the only person she could find who had this particular set of skills. So she says, let's get together and talk about this.

She's also concerned about making her breasts larger, and he happens to have written a series of articles in Esquire - while he's scratching around for a living - about how certain hormones can enlarge the breasts. This is kind of the quality of this story. There all these strange corners to it as we go along.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: And it turns out that...

RHODES: So they get together.

FLATOW: I'm sorry. You tell it better than I do. Go ahead.

RHODES: So they get together over a series of evenings, and they start thinking about: How could you build a torpedo that could be made more accurate? And they think: all right, radio guidance. Yeah, but it's easy to jam a radio signal. And this is where Hedy's invention comes in.

With - for reasons that are not quite clear in the record - but I think there are some antecedents to it in her own past - she comes up with the idea that if you could make the radio signal jump around from frequency to frequency at a fairly fast rate, at least a few dozen times per second, that someone trying to jam the signal won't be able to find it.

And if they broadcast a big, noisy signal that covers the whole range of frequencies, it will just occasionally sound like a little blip on the one or two or three or 10 or a hundred frequencies that the signal is bouncing around them on. This is her crucial invention. And they do, together, get a patent on this idea and its manifestation in a torpedo design, and this brings in George Antheil's interests.

He's someone who, in the course of his avant-garde composition, was once faced with a problem of how do you coordinate the playing of up to 16-player pianos. He never succeeded, really, in doing that, but he did learn about the idea of using a scroll of paper or some other kind of tape that's punched with holes to convey the signal to this piano of which key to play. And by adapting that so that the whole signal and electronic signal to be produced, they devised one form of their invention which is the one they use in their patent to show that it's a practical idea.

FLATOW: But you couldn't cram all of that into a torpedo.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

RHODES: This turns out to be the disaster from the Navy point of view. The Navy officers who are involved in looking at this invention don't really get the idea that this player-piano system is just one idea, that there are many different ways to make this happen. As Antheil wrote later, you could have put it on a piece of wire and run it through a mechanism the size of a wristwatch, which is true. But the Navy didn't see it that way and said, how are you going to put a player piano in a torpedo? And they threw the invention away.

FLATOW: But many years later, it got picked up.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

RHODES: But after the war, and unfortunately, after the invention had - their patent had expired in the 1950s, a curious electrical engineer with a long Hungarian name, which I can't even pronounce - but he was the son of a series of counts and counts going back in history came - was handed this expired patent. And the Navy said, can you use this to make a jam-proof signal for a sonobuoy, a buoy that would float on the water, send down sonar signals if it registers that there's a submarine underneath, would then transmit the information to a plane flying overhead using frequency hopping to make the signal unjammable.

He says, sure. And he built - designed such a system. At that point, the military picks up on this technology because one of the fundamental problems with military communications is you don't want them to be jammed. And so you find ship-to-ship radios that were on ships during the Cuban missile crisis, control systems for missiles - from the ground to the missile. Ultimately, GPS, the signal that comes back to Earth that we use to read the GPS information is frequency hopping.

And you - and then in the 1980s when this technology was declassified, it was no longer secret, it began to be picked up first on car radios and then on cell phones, wireless telephones, Bluetooth - for a different reason. Now, the problem is you have a fairly low-powered signal going around from, let's say my cell phone to the central tower, and the problem is if everything's on one frequency, they're all going to be interfering with each other.

But if every phone can hop around from frequency to frequency, then you can have 800, 1,000, 40,000, 100,000 phones all communicating with that one tower, and they won't interfere with each other in any way that's meaningful.

FLATOW: Well, she lived long enough to see her work bear fruit. But was she very disappointed or upset that she didn't profit from any of this?

You know, she didn't want to profit because she gave the patent to the U.S. Navy. It was her contribution to the war effort. But she did want to be recognized and - particularly because she's always had this feeling that no one in Hollywood ever understood that she was an intelligent human being. She was never given particularly good roles. She wasn't asked to act. And she was well trained as actress. So her Hollywood career was a really bitter disappointment to her, even though she made a great deal of money.

RHODES: And then she had, as actors and actresses do, she had to deal with what do I do for the rest of my life? And she was pretty invisible for the rest of her life. So she wanted recognition that in an interview for a magazine in 1990 when she was then approaching her 80's, she said, people seem to just take and take and they never give back. She really was unhappy about it. Fortunately, some of the early pioneers of wireless computer systems picked up on the fact that this had been Hedy's patent all those years ago and started a quiet movement to get her some kind of recognition.

And in 1998 when she was, I think, about 80 years old, she finally was awarded a Communications Pioneer Freedom Foundation award and was delighted with it. But when they called her up to tell her about the award, Hedy being Hedy, she said, well, it's about time.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: And she didn't want to be seen in public at that point, right?

RHODES: She had had a lot of bad plastic surgery by then and really was not happy with going out at all. So she recorded a thank you, and then her son Anthony carried the recording to the conference, the convention where the award was presented and he received the award and played the tape. And I actually have a copy of a copy of a copy of that tape passed down by these various computer pioneers, which has Hedy's voice on it, saying thank you very much. I hope it's been of some use.

FLATOW: She - and in between - and there - and while she's in Hollywood she noodled around with lots of little inventions. Name a few of the little I inventions that she was...

RHODES: I think the most interesting, in a way, is one that she worked on with the help of a couple of chemist who were loaned to her by Howard Hughes. I mean, she dated around quite a bit, and I'm sure Howard Hughes was one of her boyfriends at some point. So he loaned her a couple of chemist. This was a tablet, kind of like an Alka-Seltzer tablet that if you dropped it into a glass of water, would fizz up and make a coke. And it never evidently really worked. She laughed about it many years later. But, I mean, it doesn't sound like a bad idea (unintelligible).

FLATOW: There was something called Fizzies when I was a kid. There's something called Fizzies that has sort of worked like that.

RHODES: Yes. I don't think that was her invention, but they did come along. She had some ideas at the end of her life to improve the French-British supersonic passenger liner, the Concorde. She came up with an improved stoplight signal. She had an idea for a little box that would attach to a Kleenex box so you could put your waste Kleenex somewhere - she was obviously someone who was just constantly looking at the world and thinking, well, I can make an improvement there. She had a chair that you could wheel in and out of a shower, so that people who couldn't stand can take a shower. She was an interesting woman.

FLATOW: She was - she was Hollywood's first star geek, it sounds.

RHODES: She was. She was.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Movie star.

RHODES: And it turns out there were a few others. Harpo Marx, evidently, was an inventor as well. So there are these people tucked away in the history of Hollywood who were doing other things. It's nice to know.

FLATOW: Yeah. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Richard Rhodes, author of the new book "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." And it's - seeing him memorize - mesmerized by Richard telling the story, and he tells it as well in his book. It's really interesting book, and people trying to get - now that your book is out, maybe we'll get to see some more productions of the - of "Frequency Hopping," which was a play that was in production a few years ago, right?

RHODES: That's right.

FLATOW: There's a movie about it or scripts floating around about her looking to be cast.

RHODES: There is, and a German actress has recently optioned my book, actually. I think probably because she wants to play Hedy, so let's hope that this motion picture happens. It's a wonderful story.

FLATOW: Yeah. Are there any parts of her story you could not uncover that you - that remain a mystery to you that you would've liked to have touched into?

RHODES: Well, you know, most of the previous versions of the story, including that script you were talking about, conflate up a love affair between George Antheil, the composer, and Hedy, and I found that questionable. She always dated taller men than she, and she was five foot seven, quite tall for her day. George was an interesting, little guy who was about five-three. Time magazine once called him a cello-sized composer...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

RHODES: ...which I thought was a marvelous description. So it seems unlikely to me, but he was someone who had quite a few affairs in the course of his life, and when he died in 1959, left his wife whatever estate he had and a 6-month old illegitimate son, so...

FLATOW: No, there's another myth that you - that is well known, and you've debunked it, sort of, that the young Hedy tried to escape from her husband who was meeting all these munitions people, these Nazi munitions people, that she drugged her husband and dressed up in the maid's outfit to sneak out of the country. And you say that there's no real record of that happening.

RHODES: Well, even more, it's as if her escape was a secret, but I'd looked at the newspapers from the day, and there were big headlines both in this country and in Vienna that Hedwig Kiesler, as her name was then, was divorcing Fritz Mandl, so it was public knowledge that a divorce was underway. The fact that she got out of town is pretty obviously something he was aware of, may even have colluded in. I don't know.

You know, this - he escaped Nazi Germany just to hear later he was Jewish and took with him all of his money, which was considerable, moved to Argentina, and helped build the air force for the notorious dictator of Argentina. So I think they knew that they were both trying to get out of Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria as it was then.

FLATOW: You say in the book that you think that's story was - it sounds like a concoction of a movie agent or a studio agent making up a fantastic tale like that.

RHODES: Precisely.

FLATOW: And so you're very satisfied with how the book came out and the research and the things that you uncovered.

RHODES: I am. There's always more than you would like to know, you know, exactly what happened within the government in their decision, first, not to use this patent and then to pick it up and essentially make it one of the fundamental components of our military technology. That's kind of a mystery because it was all secret information, and curiously enough, a lot of the documentation has never been declassified because of some stubborn decision on the part of the agencies involved that there were commercial secrets involved in all of these. So the real inside stuff about that part of the story is waiting to be uncovered.

FLATOW: All right. Stuff for another book for you maybe, Richard.

RHODES: Another book.

FLATOW: There you go. Well, thank you for writing this one because, as I say, Hedy Lamarr is one of my favorite inventor characters in history, and I'm glad you filled in and debunked a lot of its stuff for us.

RHODES: It was fun to write...

FLATOW: Richard Rhodes...

RHODES: ...because it's a fun story.

FLATOW: It's a great story. Richard Rhodes' new book, "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." That's about all the time we have for today.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/02/143055128/the-beauty-and-brains-behind-hedys-folly?ft=1&f=1007

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