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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Jason Behr and KaDee Strickland Welcome Son Atticus

The rep tells PEOPLE, "The family is overjoyed, happy and in great health."Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/QiOZAoQpI1w/
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Nicolas Cage Criticizes Hollywood's Lack of Opportunities for Male Asian Actors (Video)

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage just wrapped up shooting on location in China for British director Nick Powell’s upcoming period drama Outcast, co-starring Hayden Christensen. But before Cage left the country, he gave an interview to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, in which he reveals a few things about his role in the film, discusses his acting methods and speaks out against the dearth of lead roles offered to male Asian actors in Hollywood.

Answering a question about his experience working with the Chinese crew on Outcast, Cage took the opportunity to briefly turn the interview in a more serious direction.

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After praising his female co-star Liu Yifei's performance and saying how much he enjoyed working with the Chinese industry, Cage added: “I hope that we will see more Chinese actors in American cinema too. We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it’s very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father -- and I want that to be open to him. So I want to make some kind of effort to see more of that happen in Hollywood.”

Cage’s wife Alice Kim is Korean-American. He said their 8-year-old son, Kal-El (named after Superman's birth name on planet Krypton), came along with him to China.

“He was here with me for the first few weeks, but he had to go back to the States to go back to school," he said. "Selfishly, I wanted him to stay with me the whole time, but the teachers said he had to go back to school, so he went home."

Outcast is the first film Cage – whose filmography spans some 75 films – has shot in China. He described the experience as positive and noted that he has "no doubt" China will soon surpass North America to become the world's largest film market, as many analysts have forecasted.

The film is a co-production between China's Yunnan Film Group and U.S.-Australian outfit Arclight Films.

“I do want to come back, and I want to work with a Chinese director and Chinese actors,” Cage said. “If there’s something that makes sense for a white guy like me, I’d like to do that here in China.”

He said he views Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love, Lust, Caution) as one of the world’s great actors.

“I would like to make a movie with Tony, but I don’t know how to do it,” he said. “I want to do it.”

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Last month Cage attended China’s Huading Awards, an awards show that honors talent across all categories of the arts. At the time he told The Hollywood Reporter that he hopes to soon move to Hong Kong.

He reiterated that desire in the CCTV interview, saying, “One of my goals is to have a base near mainland China. I think Hong Kong would be a good match for me. I like being in Hong Kong.”

Cage also gave a few hints about his role in Outcast, describing his character as a "reformed crusader," adding that Powell, who is British, asked him to put on an English accent for the part.

“I'm working with a character who goes through a catharsis -- who transforms from a violent man, as a crusader, to someone who no longer wants that life -- and he leaves,” he said.

The hardworking actor also shared a few of his methods: “When I act, I hear it like music,” he said. “In my head, I hear the dialogue like music. And the movements, like dance…I do design my performances, and then when I get to the set, the part I can’t talk about -- the magic inside, the sacred part, the emotion -- I fill it with that. But I design it first like a performance.”

Near the end of the segment, CCTV’s anchor gently challenged Cage on his recent filmography, noting that some critics have questioned his choice of projects.

“You can’t make your choices based on what critics think. You have to make your choices based on what’s honest for you,” Cage replied.

He added: "I can’t let it bother me. I’m happy. I’m making movies I want to make. Something is working."

Watch the full interview below.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HollywoodReporterAsia/~3/yyVZfmuwkRU/story01.htm
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Despicable Me

Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com weekly to chat live with readers. An edited transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up here to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie’s Slate columns here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com.)

Q. Embarrassed by Co-workers: Having been single for a few months now, my colleagues have been trying to set me up with various guys. Recently at a company-sponsored dinner they suggested a guy in the office who I don't know, but is not really good looking. I assumed they were joking and laughed, declaring I would never sleep with someone who looked like him. I followed that up saying I could not imagine any woman sleeping with him. A woman at the end of the table who had been listening in gave me a strange look and got up and left. I didn't think anything until the next day someone told me that she was the wife of the man I was talking about. I am mortified and am thinking of a way to apologize. Should I call her? Call him? Send her a note saying, "You obviously DO sleep with him"? Please help me dig myself out of this.

A: So your colleagues suggested fixing you up with a married man whose wife was sitting at the table. You replied by saying of a co-worker, "Blech! Who would be desperate enough to sleep with him!" Probably sending a note to the wife saying, "I don't know how you do it, but I understand you are willing to sleep with Reginald even though I find him repulsive," will not ameliorate this situation. This whole thing is complicated by the fact that you don't know whether your co-worker knows of your insult. It's possible his wife told him. Or she might just have decided to shield him from the unpleasant remark. She also might not even know your name. If you were sure he'd heard, you could simply say to him, "I'm mortified at what a jerk I can be sometimes. I apologize." But if he doesn't know, that would be a mystifying and disturbing declaration. So I think this is one of those situations that you file under: Lesson Learned, Big Time.

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Q. Toddler Stepson: My wife and I have custody of my 3-year-old stepson and have an 8-month-old. The 3-year-old is a typical 3-year-old ... too rough and too loud with the baby, beginning to talk back, question why on everything, being bossy, not listening, and he's definitely jealous of the baby. I try to make time to play with just him, but I'm also aware that the baby gets most of my attention, well, because he's a baby. Throw in discipline and my stepson thinks I'm "grumpy all the time" and "I don't like him." Any thoughts or advice?

A: Please get some parenting classes and read Your Three-Year-Old and Between Parent and Child. These books will help you get into the mind of your stepson and see what motivates his behavior and how you can shape yours to have a happier kid and better relationship. Sure, a 3-year-old needs guidance, but if most of it is in the form of discipline, there's something wrong. You sound as if you're trying to say you understand your stepson is only a toddler, but what comes across is that you don't like him very much. Think of things from his perspective. In three short years his father has disappeared (if he ever knew him) his mother has married someone else, and now he has a new sibling. That's a lot to absorb, and your job as his father is to help make him feel secure and loved, not let him know that you find him utterly exasperating.

Q. Stepmom Attempted to Run Dad Over With Car—Now What?: I am an adult and my parents were divorced more than 10 years ago because my father had an affair with another woman. He and this woman eventually married and their relationship has been fraught with blow-out fights, distrust, and dysfunction ever since. In the past, she has thrown things at him (without actually hitting him, luckily) and verbally abused him, but since I haven't actually witnessed these events I do not know whether she is the only one behaving badly or if my dad is also guilty of this abusive behavior. Most recently, I have learned thirdhand that my stepmother attempted to run my father over with a car, ostensibly because of a disagreement about what to do with the money from the sale of a property that they co-own. My father did not involve the police when this incident occured as he likely should have. This latest drama seems to cross a line where I no longer feel that we can just stand by and allow this to continue. But, at the same time, he is an adult of substantial means who could, if he chose to, leave the relationship at any time. How can I best help my dad?

A: You're right, we don't know if this is a mutual dance of violence, but men can be victims of domestic abuse and if he's being run over by a car driven by his wife, your father is one. I suggest you call the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Talk to the people there about how you might intervene. At the very least, you should get your father alone, say you've heard of the escalating violence, and you are concerned for his well-being. It's likely he will dismiss what you say, but sometimes the voice of a trusted person will make someone see their situation in a new light. But you also have to accept that he may be so deep into a destructive pattern, that he's more committed to playing it out than being healthy.

Q. Re: Toddler stepson: I recently started sitting my 3-year-old grandson. There were days when it seemed like we were clashing and he was ignoring me all day. Last week, it occurred to me that our clashes are because he is bored, much as a smart student who is not being challenged in class becomes bored and disruptive. After that thought, I worked hard at being less “NO,” and more letting him explore and learn with supervision. He and I have both been happier.

A: Lovely! I agree that the stepfather can do a lot to make his stepson happier, which will make the entire family happier.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2013/10/dear_prudence_i_accidentally_insulted_a_co_worker_oops.html
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CWRU makes nanodiamonds in ambient conditions

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

21-Oct-2013

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Contact: Kevin Mayhood
kevin.mayhood@case.edu
216-534-7183
Case Western Reserve University

Opens door for flexible electronics, implants and more

CLEVELAND--Instead of having to use tons of crushing force and volcanic heat to forge diamonds, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a way to cheaply make nanodiamonds on a lab bench at atmospheric pressure and near room temperature.

The nanodiamonds are formed directly from a gas and require no surface to grow on.

The discovery holds promise for many uses in technology and industry, such as coating plastics with ultrafine diamond powder and making flexible electronics, implants, drug-delivery devices and more products that take advantage of diamond's exceptional properties.

Their investigation is published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The findings build on a tradition of diamond research at Case Western Reserve.

Beyond its applications, the discovery may offer some insight into our universe: an explanation of how nanodiamonds seen in space and found in meteorites may be formed.

"This is not a complex process: ethanol vapor at room temperature and pressure is converted to diamond," said Mohan Sankaran, associate professor of chemical engineering at Case Western Reserve and leader of the project. "We flow the gas through a plasma, add hydrogen and out come diamond nanoparticles. We can put this together and make them in almost any lab."

The process for making these small "forever stones" won't melt plastic so it is well suited for certain high-tech applications. Diamond, renowned for being hard, has excellent optical properties and the highest velocity of sound and thermal conductivity of any material.

Unlike the other form of carbon, graphite, diamond is a semiconductor, similar to silicon, which is the dominant material in the electronics industry, and gallium arsenide, which is used in lasers and other optical devices.

While the process is simple, finding the right concentrations and flowswhat the researchers call the "sweet spot"took time.

The other researchers involved were postdoctoral researcher Ajay Kumar, PhD student Pin Ann Lin, and undergraduate student Albert Xue, of Case Western Reserve; and physics professor Yoke Khin Yap and graduate student Boyi Hao, of Michigan Technical University.

Sankaran and John Angus, professor emeritus of chemical engineering, came up with the idea of growing nanodiamonds with no heat or pressure about eight years ago. Angus' research in the 1960s and 1970s led him and others to devise a way to grow diamond films at low pressure and high temperature, a process known as chemical vapor deposition that is now used to make coatings on computer disks and razor blades. Sankaran's specialty, meanwhile, is making nanoparticles using cool microplasmas.

It usually requires high pressures and high temperatures to convert graphite to diamond or a combination of hydrogen gas and a heated substrate to grow diamond rather than graphite.

"But at the nanoscale, surface energy makes diamond more stable than graphite," Sankaran explained. "We thought if we could nucleate carbon clusters in the gas phase that were less than 5 nanometers, they would be diamond instead of graphite even at normal pressure and temperature."

After several ups and downs with the effort, the process came together when Kumar joined Sankaran's lab. The engineers produced diamond much like they'd produce carbon soot.

They first create a plasma, which is a state of matter similar to a gas but a portion is becoming charged, or ionized. A spark is an example of a plasma, but it's hot and uncontrollable.

To get to cooler and safer temperatures, they ionized argon gas as it was pumped out of a tube a hair-width in diameter, creating a microplasma. They pumped ethanolthe source of carbonthrough the microplasma, where, similar to burning a fuel, carbon breaks free from other molecules in the gas, and yields particles of 2 to 3 nanometers, small enough that they turn into diamond.

In less than a microsecond, they add hydrogen. The element removes carbon that hasn't turned to diamond while simultaneously stabilizing the diamond particle surface.

The diamond formed is not the large perfect crystals used to make jewelry, but is a powder of diamond particles. Sankaran and Kumar are now consistently making high-quality diamonds averaging 2 nanometers in diameter.

The researchers spent about a year of testing to verify they were producing diamonds and that the process could be replicated, Kumar said. The team did different tests themselves and brought in Yap's lab to analyze the nanoparticles by Raman spectroscopy.

Currently, nanodiamonds are made by detonating an explosive in a reactor vessel to provide heat and pressure. The diamond particles must then be removed and purified from contaminating elements massed around them. The process is quick and cheap but the nanodiamonds aggregate and are of varying size and purity.

The new research offers promising implications. Nanodiamonds, for instance, are being tested to carry drugs to tumors. Because diamond is not recognized as an invader by the immune system, it does not evoke resistance, the main reason why chemotherapy fails.

Sankaran said his nanodiamonds may offer an alternative to diamonds made by detonation methods because they are purer and smaller.

The group's process produces three kinds of diamonds: about half are cubic, the same structure as gem diamonds, a small percentage are a form suspected of having hydrogen trapped inside and about half are lonsdaleite, a hexagonal form found in interstellar dust but rarely found on Earth.

A recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters suggests that when interstellar dust collides, such high pressure is involved that the graphitic carbon turns into londsdaleite nanodiamonds.

Sankaran and Kumar contend that an alternative with no high pressure requirement, such as their method, should be considered, too.

"Maybe we're making diamond in the way diamond is sometimes made in outer space," Sankaran proposed. "Ethanol and plasmas exist in outer space, and our nanodiamonds are similar in size and structure to those found in space."

The group is now investigating whether it can fine-tune the process to control which form of diamond is made, analyzing the structures and determining if each has different properties. Lonsdaleite, for instance, is harder than cubic diamond.

The researchers have made a kind of nanodiamond spray paint. "We can do this in a single step, by spraying the nanodiamonds as they are produced out of the plasma and purified with hydrogen, to coat a surface," Kumar said.

And they are working on scaling up the process for industrial use.

"Will they be able to scale up? That's always a crap shoot," Angus said. "But I think it can be done, and at very high rates and cheaply. Ultimately, it may take some years to get there, but there is no theoretical reason it can't be done."

If the scaled-up process is as simple and cheap as the lab process, industry will find many applications for the product, Sankaran said.

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