Passive Voice

*Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found

The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest. ^[1]
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around.

*Soros-Funded Lefty Groups Want Religion Out of Politics

It’s an old trick from the left’s playbook: Force an issue on the public and then declare that the conservative reaction is divisive and out-of-bounds.
The uproar over the Susan G. Komen foundation’s decision to remove it’s funding from Planned Parenthood, followed quickly by President Obama’s contraception mandate, has reignited the culture wars in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign. And the religious conservatives most impacted are now being told their faith has no place in national politics. ^[2]  
The sudden focus on faith has spurred14 left-leaning religious groups to call for a separation of religion and politics. Their draft of "An Interfaith Statement of Principles" brands candidates who appeal to voters based on faith as “inappropriate” and “divisive,” and calls for religious appeals to be removed from political campaigns entirely.
It comes as no surprise that half of these religious groups are funded by left-wing coalition financier George Soros, who, in just 10 years, has given more than $550 million to advance the liberal agenda.
The six Soros funded organizations who have endorsed the “Interfaith Statement of Principles” are: The Interfaith Alliance, the Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Advocates, the Sikh Coalition, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the United Church of Christ. Together they have received more than $600,000 in Soros grants.

*Obama Losing Footing in Key Swing States

President Barack Obama’s lead in the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio, and Virginia is slipping and has now dropped below the 50 percent level normally viewed as safe, a new NBC-Marist poll shows.

In Florida and Virginia Obama leads likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters and in Ohio the president is ahead 48 percent to 42 percent. In March Obama led Romney by 12 in Ohio, 17 in Virginia, and was ahead by eight percent in a January Florida survey.

NBC News reported that Obama is benefiting from a belief the economy has improved. The poll found that majorities in all three states felt that the worst of the poor economy is behind us^[3]. Obama is also being aided by a feeling he inherited the poor economy. In Florida, 56 percent hold that belief and 57 percent feel that way in Ohio and Virginia. ^[4]

However, the president is being hurt by a sense the country is on the wrong track. In Ohio, 55 percent believe the country is on the wrong track, 57 percent in Florida, and 58 percent in Virginia.

*Bernanke Tells ABC Economic Recovery Has ‘Long Way To Go’

The U.S. economy is not yet on a certain path to a full recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a televised interview with ABC News on Tuesday.
“It’s far too early to declare victory,” Bernanke said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, according to a transcript of the interview to be aired Tuesday night on “World News.” The Fed chief acknowledged a brightening in the recent economic data, noting that new jobs have been created and that measures of consumer and business sentiment have improved^[5]. And Europe’s fragile economy has become less worrisome recently, he said.
“The financial system looks stronger and more stable,” Bernanke said. However, he cautioned that the housing market is still “pretty flat,” long-term unemployment remains a problem and that the current 8.3% jobless rate is still too high.
“We need to be cautious and make sure this is sustainable,” Bernanke said. “We haven’t quite yet got to the point where we can be completely confident that we’re on a track to full recovery.”
Bernanke’s comments Tuesday amplified cautionary remarks he made in a speech Monday on the jobs market. Bernanke focused Monday on the problem of long-term unemployment, saying the central bank will need to keep interest rates low for a long time to confront the deep problems in the labor market.
In Tuesday’s interview, Bernanke said it could be a “few more years” until the unemployment rate reaches a more normal level.
“Unless we get faster growth than we’ve been seeing, it is probably gonna take a while still,” Bernanke said.
When asked whether the central bank planned a third round of bond-buying to boost the economy, Bernanke said the Fed was prepared to respond to “however the economy evolves” and hadn’t ruled out any options. ^[6]
Bernanke sounded a note of concern over the recent rise in oil and gasoline prices, calling them a “major problem” creating a “moderate” risk to the economy. The higher gasoline prices may cause inflation to be “a little bit higher” in the next few months and could dent consumer spending, the Fed chief said.
“They’re obviously a hardship for lots of people,” Bernanke said. “It must be awfully frustrating to get a small raise at work and then have it all eaten by a higher cost of commuting.”
But Bernanke didn’t expect gasoline prices at their current level to create a major impediment to economic growth.
“We don’t think it’s going to be anything that’s going to stall the recovery,” he said. Bernanke told congressional lawmakers earlier this year that higher gas prices could create temporary inflation pressures, but were unlikely to disturb the Fed’s expectations for stable prices in the longer term.
Bernanke sidestepped political questions, demurring to speculate on how long he would remain at the Federal Reserve or to respond to critiques from Republican presidential candidates.
The Fed is nonpartisan, he said. “We’re not paying any attention to election calendars or political debates.”

*Bank of Japan meeting noted that the euro-zone economic stagnation and fear continued

The Bank of Japan announced on the 28th, the last monetary policy meeting showed that the Bank of Japan policy board is generally believed that the coming period, the euro zone economy probably will continue at a standstill. ^[7]

The announcement of the meeting held based on the 427-day monetary policy meeting, when the French presidential elections and the Greek Parliament election results is not yet clear. The record shows that the policy led by the Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa members believe that a fundamental solution to debt problems in Europe, the European economic stability and sustained growth, eurozone governments must be in the fiscal reconstruction, industrial competitiveness, labor market and other aspects of the fundamental structural reforms. However, the Committee also pointed out that structural reforms to achieve results takes quite some time.

Meeting records also show that the current expansion of euro zone economic stagnation has been checked, but accompanied by a tightening of fiscal policy will continue to implement, and financial institutions to compress the movement of assets, euro-zone economy stagnated in the coming period will continue.

Views on China’s economy, participating members of that by the follow-up impact of the slowdown in exports, as well as previous financial contraction policy, China’s domestic consumption of durables and non-governmental real estate investment signs of a slowdown, but the overall employment and income environment, domestic demand the center of high economic growth rate is expected to continue.

*Muscle memory (strength training)

Muscle memory has been used to describe the observation that various muscle-related tasks seem to be easier to perform after previous practice, even if the task has not been performed for a while. It is as if the muscles “remember”. The term could relate to tasks as disparate as playing the clarinet and weight-lifting, i. e. the observation that strength trained athletes experience a rapid return of muscle mass and strength even after long periods of inactivity. Until recently all such effects was largely attributed to motor learning occurring in the central nervous system, but long term effects of previous training on the muscle fibers themselves have recently been observed, in particular related to strenght training
Until recently it was generally assumed that the effects of exercise on muscle was reversible, and that after a long period of de-training the muscle fibers returned to their previous state. ^[8] For strength training this view was recently challenged by using in vivo imaging techniques revealing specific long lasting structural changes in muscle fibers after a strength-training episode. The notion of a memory mechanism residing in the muscle fibers might have implications for health related exercise advice, and also for exclusion times after doping offences. Muscle memory is probably related to the cell nuclei residing inside the muscle fibers, as is described below.
The muscle cells are the largest cells in the body with a volume thousands of times larger than most other body cells. To support this large volume, the muscle cells are one of the very few in the mammalian body that contains several cell nuclei. Such multinucleated cells are called syncytia. Strength-training increases muscle mass and force mainly by changing the caliber of each fiber rather than increasing the number of fibers. During such fiber enlargement muscle stem cells in the muscle tissue multiply and fuse with pre-existing fibers as to support the larger cellular volume. It has often been assumed that each nucleus can support a certain volume of cytoplasm, and hence that there is a constant volume domain served by each nucleus, although recent evidence suggests that this is an oversimplification. Until recently it was believed that during muscle wasting (atrophy) muscle cells lost nuclei by a nuclear self-destruct mechanism called apoptosis, but recent observations using time laps in vivo imaging in mice do not support this model. Direct observation indicated that no nuclei are lost under such conditions, and the apoptosis observed in the muscle tissue were demonstrated to occur only in other cell nuclei in the tissue, e.g. connective tissue and muscle stem cells called satellite cells. Since in vivo imaging have confirmed that cell nuclei are added during strength training and not lost upon subsequent detraining, the nuclei might provide a mechanism for muscle memory. Thus, upon retraining the extra nuclei are already there and can rapidly start synthesizing new protein to build muscle mass and strength. The extra muscle nuclei obtained by a strength training episode, seems to be very long lasting, perhaps permanent, even in muscles that are inactive for a long time. The ability to recruit new nuclei is impaired in the elderly so it might be beneficial to strength train before senescence. Doping with anabolic steroids also seem to act partly by recruiting new nuclei so it is possible that doping give offenders a long lasting perhaps life long benefit compared to athletes not cheating.

 *EXPLANATION*

*PRESENT PERFECT

(1) Versi tertua terkenal dari kalender Maya kuno telah ditemukan menghiasi dinding dicat boros di reruntuhan sebuah kota jauh di dalam hutan hujan Guatemala.

(5) Ketua The Fed mengakui sebuah cerah dalam data ekonomi baru-baru, mencatat bahwa pekerjaan baru telah dibuat dan bahwa langkah-langkah sentimen konsumen dan bisnis telah membaik

*PRESENT TENSE

(3) NBC News melaporkan bahwa Obama adalah manfaat dari kepercayaan ekonomi telah membaik. Jajak pendapat itu menemukan bahwa mayoritas di ketiga negara merasa bahwa yang terburuk dari ekonomi miskin adalah di belakang kami

(7) Bank of Japan mengumumkan pada tanggal 28, pertemuan kebijakan moneter terakhir menunjukkan bahwa Bank dewan kebijakan Jepang umumnya percaya bahwa periode mendatang, ekonomi zona euro mungkin akan terus di berhenti.

*PRESENT CONTINOUS

(2) Dan kaum konservatif religius yang paling terkena dampak sekarang diberitahu iman mereka tidak memiliki tempat dalam politik nasional.

(4) Obama juga dibantu dengan perasaan dia mewarisi ekonomi miskin. Di Florida, 56 persen berpendapat bahwa keyakinan dan 57 persen merasa seperti itu di Ohio dan Virginia.

*PAST TENSE

(6) Ketika ditanya apakah bank sentral direncanakan putaran ketiga pembelian obligasi untuk meningkatkan perekonomian, Bernanke mengatakan Fed siap untuk menanggapi "Namun ekonomi yang berkembang" dan tidak mengesampingkan opsi apapun.

(8) Sampai saat ini secara umum diasumsikan bahwa efek dari latihan pada otot adalah reversibel, dan setelah lama de-pelatihan serat otot kembali ke kondisi mereka sebelumnya.