WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest operator of Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans is teaming up with the largest U.S. Spanish-language media network to explain Obamacare to Hispanics in California, New York, Colorado and Georgia.

A partnership announced on Thursday by WellPoint Inc, Univision Communications Inc and healthcare marketer HolaDoctor Inc will include 70 town hall meetings in the four states, 30-second TV and radio ads, regular newscast segments devoted to subject and an online insurance center to guide consumers through the intricacies of coverage.

The initiative, one of many outreach efforts expected in the coming months to help explain President Barack Obama's healthcare law, will begin next month and run through March.

America's 52 million Hispanics are a main audience for the roll-out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will offer health coverage to millions of uninsured people through new online insurance exchanges in all 50 states and expanded Medicare coverage in about half the country.

U.S. Census data show that about one in three Hispanics lacks health coverage, while many have low-to-moderate incomes that could qualify for Medicaid or federal subsidies to help pay for private insurance. In California alone, about half of the 2.6 million people with incomes low enough to qualify for subsidies are Hispanic, according to the administration.

But experts say most Hispanics are unfamiliar with the health benefits under Obamacare, which comes into full force on January 1.

"You really have to start at that square one. People need to first understand what the value of health insurance is and then what's coming under healthcare reform," said Robyn Gilson, WellPoint's staff vice president for multicultural marketing.

WellPoint is expected to become one of the biggest participants in the new insurance marketplaces, which are slated to begin enrolling consumers on October 1. The Indianapolis-based insurer currently sells health plans under the Blue Cross Blue Shield license in 14 states.

Gilson said WellPoint turned to Univision's television and radio operations as a trusted voice in the Hispanic community. New York-based Univision has two broadcast TV networks, 10 cable networks, 62 local TV stations and 69 radio stations.

California, Colorado, New York and Georgia are all WellPoint markets with large Hispanic populations.

Depending on the success of the initiative, Gilson said the outreach effort could be expanded to more areas.

(Reporting by David Morgan.; Editing by Caroline Humer and Andre Grenon)

More urgent. More crowded. More expensive. Also, more flexible and accessible to millions.

That, in a nutshell, is how higher education has changed around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis that struck five years ago, and the Great Recession that followed.

Here's how it happened: Increasing financial pressures to get more people through higher education more efficiently opened the door to new technologies. Those technologies, in turn, have begun "unbundling" individual classes and degrees from traditional institutions much in the same way iTunes has unbundled songs from whole albums and the Internet is increasingly unbundling television shows and networks from bulky cable packages.

Here are four trends whose origins predate the Great Recession, but which have been unmistakably fueled by it:

Certificates. Austerity by European governments and U.S. states hammered the budgets of public universities, leaving students to foot more of the bill. Many have responded by seeking faster and more affordable options, targeted to deliver immediate jobs. Certificates bite-sized credentials typically in narrow, occupational fields don't count as formal degrees, but they're cheaper and can produce a substantial salary boost. Their popularity has exploded in the United States about 11 percent of American workers now have them, up from 2 percent in 1980. And while data is spotty, Anthony Carnevale of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce in Washington, D.C., says their equivalents are growing elsewhere in the developed world, and possibly in developing countries as well, where the inaccessibility of four-year degree programs is even more pressing.

Competency-based learning. Until now, the main currency of academia has been the "credit hour" if you spend a certain amount of time in the classroom and pass the course, you earn credit. That may be changing with a broad-based move toward giving students credit for what they can demonstrate they know, regardless of how much time they spend in class. Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Education signaled to colleges they can get approval to collect federal aid dollars for competency-based programs, and such programs are starting to emerge. These options could save students time and money. As technology makes self-directed learning more available in the rest of the world, other countries will be pressed to consider similar moves.

Accreditation. The very definition of a university may be changing. Traditionally, in the United States, the "club" of higher education has been guarded by a process of accreditation that's essentially run by traditional universities themselves. Regional and national associations determine whether schools meet specific standards, and can continue to issue diplomas. The government wants more flexibility that would bring into the system specialized providers companies that can offer targeted teaching even if they lack the full trappings of a traditional college. Many countries around the world envy the United States its accreditation system as a quality control. But they face similar, or even greater, challenges to ramp up higher education capacity quickly, so they also will be thinking outside their own traditional boxes.

Pressure to cut costs and "scale up" teaching helped pave the way for the popularity of MOOCs, or "Massive Open Online Courses" taught by elite universities. Two leading platforms, Coursera and edX, are closing in on five million users worldwide. These courses started out as a way for learners to sample teaching by famous professors at top universities, but options for gaining academic credit are beginning to emerge, and they are quickly infiltrating the teaching at traditional universities. To some critics, the MOOCs are little more than glorified online lectures, and dangerous ones at that; their cost-cutting promises could become an excuse for politicians to cut funding for higher education even further. MOOCs also have huge drop-out rates, with estimates that 90 percent who sign up fail to finish. Some evidence is emerging that mixing MOOCs and in-person learning can be effective. Close to half the students who've signed up for edX and Coursera come from developing countries, where demand for higher education massively outstrips supply.

My college degree helped me pursue a successful 30-year career in advertising and public relations. However, it only happened after I realized I had not made the right decision in choosing my college major.

Pursuing The Major Course I Wanted

It all began when I had earned four years of tuition under the GI Bill of Rights by serving in the U.S. Navy. Ever since childhood, I had wanted to be an artist, and that was my chance to enroll as a fine arts freshman at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (now the University of the Arts).

An Enjoyable Fine Arts Education

Throughout my undergraduate years, I appreciated the challenges and encouragement of the school's excellent teaching staff. My courses consisted of drawing, painting, sculpture and other fine arts classes. Some of my paintings were accepted for exhibition at local galleries. I was graduated with top honors and the degree of bachelor of fine arts.

Then it was time for me to earn a living from what I had learned in four years of college. I made the rounds of the many galleries in Philadelphia and New York selling my art, and had some moderate success. However, the sales were few and far between, and my income wasn't nearly enough to support myself.

Had I Made an Error in Judgment?

After a year, I came to the conclusion that I had chosen a field that, while traditionally attractive, wasn't practical in the reality of today's business world. While I hadn't wasted my four years of fine arts studies, they had not prepared me for the necessity of making a living.

I had several choices. I could go on painting, get some kind of part-time job to pay my bills, and hope I'd eventually become a successful exhibiting artist. The other choice was to go back to college and major in practical business subjects.

Fortunately, an application I'd sent to the University of Pennsylvania earned me a lab assisantship and free tuition at the Annenberg Graduate School of Communications there. I majored in mass communications and public relations, with a minor in graphic arts. After two years, and armed with a much more practical resume, I began another job search.

A Favorable Career Turn

Another fortunate opportunity coincided with earning my Master of Arts in Communications degree. Prudential Financial, Inc. was just establishing an Eastern regional office in a Philadelphia suburban area, and hiring a staff of more than 3,000 employees. I applied for the newly-created position of Public Relations and Advertising Manager, and was hired to direct the 30-person creative staff.

I recently retired after 30 years with Prudential. Today I consider my education choices and experiences may be of value to college students in the same situation I was after earning my bachelor's degree. Looking back, I had not realized then the impracticality of attempting a fine arts path in the real world where income opportunities are very limited.

Business-related degrees are essential in finding practical career promises. I believe my decision to enhance my education goals beyond fine arts to communications offered me those opportunities. For today's students, armed with the right credentials and personal determination, there's no limit to the heights that talent, hard work and ambition can earn for them.

Through a licensing deal, Klab will bring Microsoft's Xbox and Windows-based computer games to the iPhone and smartphones using Google Inc's Android operating system, according to the Nikkei.

Microsoft's "Age of the Empires" will be available as a free-to-play game worldwide on smartphones by the end of the fiscal year 2013 and other titles will follow, the report said.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Bernard Orr)

A prominent expert called the work a landmark, but noted that a different, simpler technique now under development may prove more useful.

Stem cells can turn into any cell of the body, so scientists are interested in using them to create tissue for treating disease. Transplanting brain tissue might treat Parkinson's disorder, for example, and pancreatic tissue might be used for diabetes.

But transplants run the risk of rejection, so more than a decade ago, researchers proposed a way around that: Create tissue from stem cells that bear the patient's own DNA, obtained with a process called therapeutic cloning.

If DNA from a patient is put into a human egg, which is then grown into an early embryo, the stem cells from that embryo would provide a virtual genetic match. So in theory, tissues created from them would not be rejected by the patient.

That idea was met with some ethical objections because harvesting the stem cells involved destroying human embryos.

Scientists have tried to get stem cells from cloned human embryos for about a decade, but they've failed. Generally, that's because the embryos stopped developing before producing the cells. In 2004, a South Korean scientist claimed to have gotten stem cells from cloned human embryos, but that turned out to be a fraud.

In Wednesday's edition of the journal Cell, however, scientists in Oregon report harvesting stem cells from six embryos created from donated eggs. Two embryos had been given DNA from skin cells of a child with a genetic disorder, and the others had DNA from fetal skin cells.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University, who led the research, said the success came not from a single technical innovation, but from revising a series of steps in the process. He noted it had taken six years to reach the goal after doing it with monkey embryos.

Mitalipov also said that based on monkey work, he believes human embryos made with the technique could not develop into cloned babies, and he has no interest in trying to do that.Scientists have cloned more than a dozen kinds of mammals, starting with Dolly the sheep.

The new work was financed by the university and the Leducq Foundation in Paris.

Dr. George Daley, a stem cell expert at Children's Hospital Boston who didn't participate in the work, called the new results "one landmark step in a very long journey" toward creating DNA-matched transplant tissue.

Now, Daley said, scientists must compare the embryo-cloning approach with another technology that reprograms blood or skin cells directly into substitutes for embryonic stem cells. This reprogramming approach is technically simpler and doesn't involve embryos or require the donation of human eggs, and it was widely acclaimed when it was reported in 2007. Its Japanese developer shared a Nobel Prize last year.

But these substitute cells show some molecular differences compared to embryonic ones, which has led to questions about whether they can safely be used for treating patients. So it's essential to compare the cells from the two methods, Daley said.

The new results mean "we have another tool," he said. "We have to learn more about this tool."

Daley said he believed scientists will prefer using the reprogramming approach unless it can be proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that embryo cloning produces better cells for treating patients.

Mitalipov said he believed his technique would present a particular advantage for treating patients with a certain type of rare diseases. These are caused by mutations in genes of the mitochondria, the power plants of cells. He noted his technique, unlike the cell-reprogramming approach, would supply tissue with new mitochondrial genes that could replace defective ones. Those new genes would come from the egg.

The Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education for National Catholic Bioethics Center, an independent think tank in Philadelphia, reiterated his opposition to embryo cloning, calling the approach unethical.

"It involves the decision to utilize early human beings as repositories for obtaining desired cells," he said. "You're creating them only to destroy them."

Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif., said she was glad that Mitalipov doubted the embryos could be used to clone babies. She said the report still provides a good opportunity for the federal government to ban the use of cloning for reproduction.

___

Online:

Journal Cell: http://www.cell.com/

___ Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

The trademark application, submitted on June 3 and released on the Japan Patent Office website on June 27, would cover computers, computer peripherals and wristwatches, the official said. He said it was unknown how long the application process would require.

An Apple spokesman in Japan could not immediately be reached for comment.

Speculation has mounted that Apple is preparing to launch an iWatch and CEO Tim Cook told a gathering of tech and media executives a month ago that wearable products were ripe for exploration, but added he was skeptical, including about Google Inc's recently unveiled Glass which combines a mobile computer and eyeglasses.

"There's nothing that's going to convince a kid who has never worn glasses or a band or a watch to wear one, or at least I haven't seen it," Cook said.

Wearable devices are considered a potential area for hit products as smartphones such as the iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy series are losing their ability to impress consumers and investors.

Samsung, which has leapfrogged Apple as the world's leading smartphone maker, is also developing a wearable device similar to a wristwatch, a source with knowledge of the matter has said.

The New York Times reported in February that Apple was experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch that would operate on the same iOS platform as its iPhone and iPad and would be made with curved glass.

(Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo; Writing by Edmund Klamann; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made clear that a diplomatic push to arrange a new round of talks, launched after Hassan Rouhani won the June 14 election, had produced no breakthrough.

"There is no agreement now on when and where the next round will be. That worries us," Ryabkov told Interfax news agency.

"After the election of the Iranian president, we stepped up work in preparation for a new round of talks but so far the work is not being done transparently."

International hopes for a resolution of the nuclear dispute were boosted by the election of Rouhani, who has promised a more conciliatory approach to foreign relations than predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran says it is enriching uranium only to fuel a planned network of nuclear power stations, and for medical purposes.

But refined uranium also provides the fissile material for nuclear bombs if processed further, which the West fears may be Tehran's ultimate goal.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

The new study is the first comprehensive look at the dizzying array of pterosaur bone fragments found in England. These fossils, which date back to the , are all fragmentary. Though they were first excavated more than a century ago, the fossils have been difficult to identify thanks to the lack of full bones.

Now, Taissa Rodrigues, a pterosaur researcher at the Federal University of Espirito Santo in Brazil, has built an English pterosaur family tree of sorts, sifting through the fossil fragments to identify 14 species with certainty.

These species show an amazing range of diversity, with teeth ranging from small to huge. Some had elaborate head crests and others had no decoration at all, Rodrigues told LiveScience. []

"Some have very slender snouts, and others have very massive jaws, and so we are able to see they have different adaptations," she said. "These different adaptations probably mean the different species have different habits, most possibly feeding habits."

Pterosaurs are the flying reptiles known to the general public as , though pterodactyls represent just one group of pterosaurs.

England is home to one of the most important pterosaur fossils sites in the world, the Cambridge Greensand, a geological formation in the eastern part of the country. The fossils there have been buried, exposed and reburied, scrambling the geological record somewhat, Rodrigues said. The fossil record probably represents about 1,000 years or so of fossils, she said. Other pterosaur fossils in England are from a similar timeframe, on a geologic scale, anyway the specimens Rodrigues studied are only a few million years apart in time.

By meticulously comparing the features present on the fossil fragments, including head crests and teeth, Rodrigues and her colleagues concluded that of 30 proposed species, 14 could be confirmed and another 16 remain too fragmentary to correctly identify. The researchers published these findings in the journal .

The resulting pterosaur family tree revealed that the English species are closely related to Cretaceous pterosaurs found in Brazil and China. The linkage suggests that all of these species descended from a common ancestor not too long before, Rodrigues said.

"We don't know the origin [of the ancestor], but we do know that about this time, 110 million years ago, they were already widespread in the world," Rodrigues said of the pterosaurs. She now plans to launch an equally ambitious cataloguing of Brazlian pterosaurs.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on and . Follow us , & . Original article on .

For the study, detailed in the June 13 issue of the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, researchers used an X-ray beam to identify ancient traces of pigment in fossils of , a winged creature that lived about 150 million years ago.

"This work refines our understanding of pigment patterning in perhaps the most important known fossil. Our technique shows that complex patterns were present even at the very earliest steps in the evolution of birds," said study co-author Roy Wogelius, an earth scientist at Manchester University in the United Kingdom, in a statement.

Rare bird

Archaeopteryx was a transitional species betweenand birds that lived in what is now Germany. Scientists believe birds evolved from theropods, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs taht includes the, during the Jurassic Era, about 150 million years ago.

Only 11 fossils specimens of the elusive creature have been found, and scientists thought any traces of the dinobird's feathers had long since vanished. []

But recently, researchers discovered that some fossilized feathers contained traces of melanosomes, pigment-making structures. Last year, researchers analyzed some of these melanosomes and determined that .

However, the team sampled just a few spots on the feather, meaning the dinobird's full plumage pattern was still unknown.

To get a more complete picture of the dinobird, Wogelius and his colleagues used an X-ray beam from a synchrotron radiation light source to do a complete scan of a fossilized Archaeopteryx feather, as well as pigmentation found in the surrounding rock.

The team discovered trace amounts of chemicals associated with pigments, which enabled a reconstruction of the animals' feather pattern.

Instead of being all black, it turns out Archaeopteryx sported light-and-dark patterned plumage.

"The fact that these compounds have been preserved in-place for 150 million years is extraordinary," said study co-author Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester, in a statement. "Together, these chemical traces show that the feather was light in color with areas of darker pigment along one edge and on the tip. Scans of a second fossilized Archaeopteryx, known as the Berlin counterpart, also show that the trace-metal inventory supported the same plumage pigmentation pattern."

Understanding the plumage patterns could provide insights into courtship rituals, as well as the health and eating habits of these ancient creatures.

Follow Tia Ghose onand .FollowLiveScience , & . Original article on.

ATYRAU, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron helped inaugurate the world's costliest oil project in Kazakhstan on Sunday on a trip aimed at sealing business deals but quickly beset by questions over the Central Asian nation's poor human rights record.

Kazakhstan hopes Cameron's visit, the first by a serving British prime minister, will cement its status as a rising economic power and confer a degree of the legitimacy from the West it has long sought.

The visit takes place just days before the nation marks 15 years since the founding of the new Kazakh capital Astana, also the 73rd birthday of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a national holiday and cause for celebration that has been anticipated for days in state media.

Nazarbayev, a former Communist party apparatchik, has overseen market reforms and maintains wide popularity among the 17-million strong population, but has tolerated no dissent or opposition during his more than two decades in power.

Cameron said he hoped the 30 businessmen accompanying him would sign over 700 million pounds worth of deals during his two-day trip.

"We are in a global race for jobs and investment. This is one of the most rapidly emerging countries in the world," Cameron told reporters on his arrival in the Kazakh oil capital Atyrau.

His office said he aimed to "put British businesses in prime position to secure contracts that the Government believes could total 85 billion in the coming years".

Cameron is also hoping to persuade Kazakhstan to expand transit rights for British military forces relocating equipment from Afghanistan between now and a planned withdrawal next year. Nazarbayev has already granted overflight rights, but Cameron is looking for land transit rights too.

Cameron and Nazarbayev together opened the Bolashak (Future) oil plant which will process crude that is due to start flowing from the giant Kashagan offshore oilfield in September.

Royal Dutch Shell has a 16.81 percent stake in the facility, which is in the Kazakh segment of the Caspian Sea. Nazarbayev said last week consortium members had so far invested $48 billion, making it the most expensive oil venture in the world.

TEMPTING TARGET

As Britain's trade with the euro zone suffers because of the currency bloc's debt woes, it is looking further afield to forge business links with countries that have enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years.

With a $200 billion economy, the largest in Central Asia, and deep oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan is a tempting target. Britain is already among the top three sources of foreign direct investment, according to Kazakh officials.

Since its 1991 independence, officials say British firms have invested about $20 billion in their economy, part of a total $170 billion ploughed into Kazakhstan since then.

But more high profile trade links carry political risks.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cameron had a duty to use his trip to denounce human rights abuses.

"We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, (and) tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association," it said in a letter on Friday.

Answering questions from reporters in Atyrau on Sunday, Cameron said he never put trade and business interests before rights.

"We will raise all the issues, including human rights. That's part of our dialogue and I'll be signing a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan," he said.

"Nothing is off the agenda, including human rights."

Activists most want Cameron to bring up the case of Vladimir Kozlov, a jailed opposition leader, when he meets Nazarbayev.

An outspoken critic of the Kazakh leader, Kozlov was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in October for colluding with a fugitive billionaire in a failed attempt to rally oil workers to bring down the government. Kozlov denied the charges.

Nazarbayev, a former steelworker who now holds the title "The Leader of the Nation", says that he puts stability and rising living standards before hasty political changes in his steppe nation, the world's ninth-largest by area and five times the size of France.

Comparing Kazakhstan to "Asian economic tigers" like South Korea and Singapore, he has said he wants to turn it into "the economic snow leopard of Central Asia".

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; in Almaty; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)