Yahoo plans to compete on mobile by way of partnerships, not hardware or operating systems, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told Bloomberg at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where the subject of the talk was the future of Yahoo's business. The talk also delved into other areas of focus, including Yahoo's homepage, media properties, and where it could compete on search and personalization going forward.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The 2013 Sundance Film Festival is going into the homestretch, with three days of screenings, one awards ceremony and dozens of post-mortems still to come.
And as moviegoers come down from the mountain and the films that were acquired in Park City are readied for release, a festival that initially seemed to be disappointing is shaping up to be a solid showcase for a wide variety of indie films ... in other words, a fest that delivered what Sundance is supposed to deliver.
Certainly, some of us went to Park City looking for the next "Beasts of the Southern Wild," the galvanizing film that screened on the second day of last year's fest and is now a Best Picture Oscar nominee; or the next doc as entertaining as "Searching for Sugar Man" or as infuriating as "The Invisible War."
And when they didn't arrive, we quickly concluded that it was a lackluster Sundance.
But as the festival nears its awards ceremony on Saturday and its final day on Sunday, Sundance 2013 has produced a large number of deals, including a couple of the most lucrative ones in the festival's history.
"The Way, Way Back" went to Fox Searchlight for about $10 million, similar to what that studio paid for "Little Miss Sunshine" seven years ago; Joseph Gordon-Levitt's "Don Jon's Addiction" went for $4 million, but Relatively also committed to an addition $25 million in publicity and advertising support.
Nearly every film that got some buzz found a home, and the Sundance awards picture is wide open; there's no clear frontrunner, just a lot of well-liked movies with strong constituencies.
So maybe this was a sneaky Sundance, a festival that didn't look impressive until you got out of the cold, stepped back and took a look at what has happened.
The festival, like some of the movies, snuck up on you. The first three people I spoke to who saw "Don Jon's Addiction" told me that it was simply awful, and that I should stay away at all costs. Within a day or two, it was starting to pick up decent word-of-mouth, and in four days it had been picked up by Relativity.
The chick-flick comedy "Austenland" struck me as being sporadically amusing but mostly flat - but it got decent buzz, too, and found a home with Sony Pictures Classics for more than $4 million. So did "Kill Your Darlings," a murder story set in the 1944 that got less attention because its characters include Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac than because of a graphic sex scene involving Daniel Radcliffe.
And speaking of sex, which was abundant in this year's films, "Lovelace" sold to Weinstein and " Two Mothers" went to Exclusive Releasing and Michael Winterbottom's' "The Look of Love" went to IFC, all of those sales coming on the heels of reviews that were mixed at best.
The films that picked up stronger buzz - "The Spectacular Now," "Blackfish," "Fruitvale," "Toy's House" - also sold, with Weinstein's Radius and the new A24 being among the most active buyers.
Of course, Sundance sales don't guarantee Sundance hits; it remains to be seen if any of this year's entries can justify their price tags.
As for the festival prizes that will be announced on Saturday evening, the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition is in the hands of a jury that includes director Ed Burns, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and executive Tom Rothman.
David Lowery's crime-spree drama "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" has stirred up some talk of prizes, but so have first-time director Jill Soloway's character study "Afternoon Delight," Kyle Patrick Alvarez's David Sedaris adaptation "C.O.G.," Lynn Shelton's austere "Touchy Feely" and James Ponsoldt's teen drama "The Spectacular Now" ... and, for that matter, most of the other films in the broad-ranging competition.
On the documentary side, the initial buzz went to "After Tiller" and "Dirty Wars," with "Blackfish" and "Valentine Road" coming on later and "Twenty Feet From Stardom" remaining the feel-good entry.
Out of competition, Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" won raves for the way it completed the unexpected trilogy that began at Sundance with "Before Sunrise" in 1995, and Lucy Walker's documentary "The Crash Reel" won repeated standing ovations at its screenings.
Last year's Sundance award winners included six films that went on to receive Oscar nominations: "Beasts," "Sugar Man," "Invisible War," "The Sessions" (titled "The Surrogate" when it won the audience award), "5 Broken Cameras" and "Chasing Ice." The year before it produced two, both in the documentary category.
Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute on Wednesday announced their success at storing data by encoding it to DNA. The system could stand the test of time -- tens of thousands of years, perhaps. This method for archiving data could make it possible to store 100 million hours of high-definition video in about a cup of DNA, and given the trend toward Big Data, that could be a major breakthrough.
NEW YORK (AP) ? The Black Keys are remaining vigilant when it comes to sound-a-like songs.
The Nashville duo is suing Pinnacle Entertainment in New York federal court. Drummer Patrick Carney and singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach say the casino owner commissioned a song that sounds like their hit "Howlin' For You" for a commercial advertising two of its Louisiana properties. They are asking a judge for an injunction and compensation.
"The experts confirmed that this was copyright infringement," the band said in a statement Wednesday to The Associated Press.
The Keys recently settled lawsuits against Pizza Hut and Home Depot over similar charges of copying the songs "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling." Terms of those settlements were not released.
The Keys are up for five trophies at next month's Grammy Awards and Auerbach also has been nominated for producer of the year.
BMW and Toyota said Thursday the partnership will not involve a capital alliance while spanning a wide range of technologies for green vehicles.
By Yuri Kageyama,?Associated Press / January 24, 2013
In this photo released by Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota President Akio Toyoda (l.) shakes hands with BMW AG chief executive Norbert Reithofer during a signing ceremony to jointly develop next-generation batteries for green vehicles in Nagoya, central Japan, Thursday.
Toyota Motor Corp./AP
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Toyota Motor Corp. and?BMW?Group are working together on next-generation batteries for green vehicles called "lithium-air" as their collaboration, first announced in late 2011, moves ahead in fuel cells, sports vehicles and other fields.
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But both sides said Thursday the partnership will not involve a capital alliance while spanning a wide range of technologies for green vehicles.
The Japanese and German automakers aim to complete a fuel-cell vehicle system by 2020, and a concept for a mid-size sports vehicle by the end of this year. They will also work together on developing lightweight technologies such as composites, which will help make cars greener.
Joint research will be started to develop a lithium-air battery, which will be more powerful than the current lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, they said. The technology, which other automakers are also working on, will allow a major part of the battery's energy-making process to come from the oxygen in air.
BMW?AG board member Herbert Diess told reporters the cooperation will help both companies boost competitiveness in new technologies.
"We really share the same vision," he said at a news conference in Nagoya, central Japan, live-streamed at Toyota's Tokyo office.
Toyota Vice Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada said working with?BMW?will allow for a much faster development as they pool their resources.
He said the companies share a corporate culture and they have built trust over the last year. An agreement to work on technologies together was signed in June last year.
BMW, known for its strong design and sporty cars, could be a good match for Toyota, reputed for innovation and solid engineering but sometimes criticized as making dull cars.
Global automakers are forging such partnerships to become more competitive.
French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen and General Motors Co. of the U.S. have a deal to share in purchases of parts and services to cut costs. Toyota already has a joint venture with Peugeot Citroen to make small cars in Europe.
In experiments on rats outfitted with tiny goggles, scientists say they have learned that the brain's initial vision processing center not only relays visual stimuli, but also can "learn" time intervals and create specifically timed expectations of future rewards. The research, by a team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sheds new light on learning and memory-making, the investigators say, and could help explain why people with Alzheimer's disease have trouble remembering recent events.
Results of the study, in the journalNeuron , suggest that connections within nerve cell networks in the vision-processing center can be strengthened by the neurochemical acetylcholine (ACh), which the brain is thought to secrete after a reward is received. Only nerve cell networks recently stimulated by a flash of light delivered through the goggles are affected by ACh, which in turn allows those nerve networks to associate the visual cue with the reward. Because brain structures are highly conserved in mammals, the findings likely have parallels in humans, they say.
"We've discovered that nerve cells in this part of the brain, the primary visual cortex, seem to be able to develop molecular memories, helping us understand how animals learn to predict rewarding outcomes," says Marshall Hussain Shuler, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience at the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
To maximize survival, an animal's brain has to remember what cues precede a positive or negative event, allowing the animal to alter its behavior to increase rewards and decrease mishaps. In the Hopkins-MIT study, the researchers sought clarity about how the brain links visual information to more complex information about time and reward.
The presiding theory, Hussain Shuler says, assumed that this connection was made in areas devoted to "high-level" processing, like the frontal cortex, which is known to be important for learning and memory. The primary visual cortex seemed to simply receive information from the eyes and "re-piece" the visual world together before presenting it to decision-making parts of the brain.
To monitor the vision-reward connection process, the team fitted rats with special goggles that let researchers flash a light before either their left or right eye. Thirsty rats with goggles were given access to a water spout inside a testing chamber. When they approached the water spout, a brief visual cue was presented to one eye.
If light was sent to the left eye, the water spout would have to be licked a few times before water came to the rat; if light was sent to the right eye, the rat would have to lick many more times before water came. After a few daily sessions of such "conditioning" (not unlike Pavlov's famous dog-bell-reward experiments), the rats learned how long they would have to lick before getting a water reward. If they didn't get the reward in the expected amount of time, they would give up and leave the spout.
Monitoring the pattern of electrical signals given off by individual nerve cells in the rat brains, the researchers found that the signals' "spikes" weren't just reflecting the visual cue alone. Rather, the signals seemed to relay the time of expected reward delivery through altered spiking patterns. They also saw that many nerve cells seemed to report one or the other visual cue-reward interval, but not both. In cells stimulated by a flash to the left eye, the electrical signal returned to its baseline after a short delay, in sync with the timing of the water reward; a cue to the right eye correlated with a longer delay, also in sync with the reward. According to the researchers, the amount of time that passed before nerve cells returned to their resting state was the brain's way of setting up a "timed expectation."
Knowing that the basal forebrain is implicated in learning, the researchers wanted to know if their observations could be explained by nerves from the basal forebrain delivering ACh to the vision-processing center. To remove those nerve cells from the equation, they paired a neurotoxin with a "homing device" that targets only ACh-releasing neurons coming from the basal forebrain. They then repeated their experiments in trained rats that received the neurotoxin and in those that didn't, and found that the nerve cell signals continued to relay the old time intervals, suggesting that ACh and the basal forebrain weren't needed to express previously learned time information.
The researchers next used those same rats to ask if ACh is necessary for nerve cells to learn new time delays. To do that, they switched the visual cues so that a flash in the left eye meant a long delay and one in the right eye meant a short one. Vision-processing nerve cells in the rats in which ACh delivery was left intact adapted their signals to the new associations; but those in the rats that no longer received ACh continued to relay the old associations, suggesting that ACh is necessary to make new associations but not to express old ones.
Hussain Shuler explains, "When a reward is received, ACh is sent throughout the brain and reinforces only those nerve cell connections that were recently active. The process of conditioning continues to strengthen these nerve connections, giving rise to a timed expectation of reward in the brain."
According to Hussain Shuler, studies have shown that Alzheimer's patients have low levels of ACh and have trouble forming new memories. Though medication may elevate ACh, alleviation of symptoms is limited. "Our research explains that limitation," he says. "Therapeutically, we predict that the problem isn't just low levels of ACh ? the timing of ACh delivery is key."
Other authors of the report include Emma Roach of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Alexander Chubykin and Mark Bear of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thanks to Johns Hopkins Medicine for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
U.S. safety regulators are nowhere near finishing an investigation into a battery fire on the Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner, a top official said on Thursday, raising the prospect of a prolonged grounding for the plane.?
Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, made clear that investigators have found a series of "symptoms" in the battery damaged in a Jan. 7 fire in Boston, but not the underlying cause of the problem.?
"We are early in our investigation, we have a lot of activities to undertake," Hersman told a news conference.?
"This is an unprecedented event. We are very concerned. We do not expect to see fire events on board aircraft. This is a very serious air safety concern."?
She rebuffed multiple questions on how long the investigation would take, making clear it could be weeks or more. She also would not say when the 787 would fly again, which is in the hands of the Federal Aviation Administration.?
The Dreamliner?has been grounded worldwide since a plane by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16 after a battery incident, which Hersman said may or may not have been a fire.?
That emergency landing came after a fire occurred on a Japan Airlines Co Ltd 787 on the tarmac in Boston.?
Boeing said it welcomed Thursday's briefing on the 787 investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and said it continued to assist the NTSB and the other government agencies investigating two recent 787 incidents.
"The company has formed teams consisting of hundreds of engineering and technical experts who are working around the clock with the sole focus of resolving the issue and returning the 787 fleet to flight status," said Boeing spokesman John Dern.
"The safety of passengers and crew members who fly aboard Boeing airplanes is our highest priority," Dern said.
France's Thales, which makes the 787 battery system, declined to comment.?
The NTSB and its Japanese equivalent are working together on their probes, though Hersman again insisted the work was still in the early stages.?
"It is really very hard to tell at this point how long this investigation will take. We have all hands on deck," Hersman said. "We're working as hard as we can to identify what the failure mode is here and what corrective actions need to be taken."?
Series of delays The 787 program was already years behind schedule before last week's grounding, which means Boeing cannot deliver newly manufactured planes to customers.?
That means customers like United Continental Holdings Inc.?may have to wait even longer for planes on order. The company's United Airlines already flies six Dreamliners.?
"History teaches us that all new aircraft types have issues and the 787 is no different," United Continental Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Smisek said during the carrier's earnings conference call. "We continue to have confidence in the aircraft and in Boeing's ability to fix the issues, just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they've produced."?
Smisek said Thursday the carrier still expects to take delivery of two more 787s in the second half of the year.?
Boeing has already delivered 50 of the 787s. Around half have been in operation in Japan, but airlines in India, South America, Poland, Qatar and Ethiopia are also flying the planes, as is U.S. carrier United.?
The grounding of the Dreamliner, an advanced carbon-composite plane with a list price of $207 million, has already forced hundreds of flight cancellations worldwide.?
Competition from Airbus The head of Boeing's European rival Airbus said it would study the 787 Dreamliner design review and make any changes to its future A350 jetliner that may be needed as a result of the U.S. findings.?
"We believe so far we have a robust design, however we will draw the lessons from the 787," Airbus Chief Executive Fabrice Bregier told Reuters Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos.?
"We will look at the recommendations and guidelines of the FAA and if by chance we need to change it we have plenty of time because this aircraft, the 350, will be delivered to our first customers not before the second half of 2014 ? so it is not a challenge and it is not a burden for us."?
Billed as Europe's response to the Dreamliner, the A350 is due to enter service next year using lithium-ion batteries but without the same reliance on electrical systems as the 787, something Airbus says will put less burden on the batteries.?
However, Airbus has so far declined to comment on how it would tackle a battery fire if one did break out on board.?
Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, Tim Hepher in Paris and Axel Threlfall in Davos.
It?s not a secret that X-Men movie trilogy stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are lining up to reunite with X-Men 1&2 director Bryan Singer on next year?s X-Men: Days of Future Past. Technically, Stewart and McKellen weren?t even allowed to confirm their involvement with the First Class sequel, when Singer first broke the news through his Twitter account last year.
Famke Janssen (Jean Grey/Phoenix) has publicly expressed hopes that she, too, will be joining her X-Men universe compatriots in Days of Future Past. She may not be the only currently-unconfirmed franchise alum returning for the project, judging by recent comments from Jackman.
The Daily Mail chatted with Jackman, shortly after he walked away with a Golden Globe for his performance in Les Mis?rables. Wolverine confirmed what Fox?s newly-appointed Marvel Movie Universe architect Mark Millar has been saying for a while now ? that Days of Future Past?features?a Terminator-esque time-travel storyline ? and promised tons of familiar faces to the X-movieverse are making an appearance.
To quote:
?You wouldn?t have enough room on the page after you?ve listed them all.?Every other actor who?s ever put on a superhero uniform will be in it.?There?s an element of time travel and, naturally, it will be action-packed.?
Millar hopes to branch out further into the X-Men universe?down the line, with future installments exploring?mutants who have yet to make the jump from comic book to live-action form. However, before a shared (and coherent) X-Men movie universe is possible, there needs to be some restructuring done to account for how the trilogy, Origins: Wolverine, First Class and this summer?s The Wolverine?fit together. Days of Future Past?is expected to do that (in collaboration with director James Mangold?s post-X3 Wolverine flick), which explains why multiple trilogy players may be coming back for another round of mutant madness.
Important X-Men trilogy characters such as Storm (Halle Berry) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) are reasonable possibilities to show up in Days of Future Past; though, it gets trickier, with respect to someone like the deceased Cyclops (James Mardsen) making an appearance. X3?s Kelsey Grammar (Hank McCoy/Beast) and X-trilogy alum Rebecca Romijn (Mystique) would be fun additions, especially meeting up with their First Class counterparts (Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence) after Romijn?s cameo in Matthew Vaughn?s X-Men prequel/reboot/whatever.
Do you agree with those (obvious) choices? Are you hoping to see Shawn Ashmore (Iceman), Ellen Page (Kitty Pride) or even someone like Vinnie Jones (Juggernaut) in Days of Future Past? Let us know in the comments section.
The Wolverine?hits theaters July 26th, 2013. X-Men: Days of Future Past follows on July 18th, 2014.
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The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science Express.
To infect a cell, a virus must be able to first find a suitable cell and then eject its genetic material into its host. This robot-like process has been observed in a virus called T7 and visualized by Ian Molineux, professor of biology at The University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues.
The researchers show that when searching for its prey, the virus briefly extends ? like feelers ? one or two of six ultra-thin fibers it normally keeps folded at the base of its head.
Once a suitable host has been located, the virus behaves a bit like a planetary rover, extending these fibers to walk randomly across the surface of the cell and find an optimal site for infection.
At the preferred infection site, the virus goes through a major change in structure in which it ejects some of its proteins through the bacterium's cell membrane, creating a path for the virus's genetic material to enter the host.
After the viral DNA has been ejected, the protein path collapses and the infected cell membrane reseals.
"Although many of these details are specific to T7," said Molineux, "the overall process completely changes our understanding of how a virus infects a cell."
For example, the researchers now know that most of the fibers are usually bound to the virus head rather than extended, as was previously thought. That those fibers are in a dynamic equilibrium between bound and extended states is also new.
Molineux said that the idea that phages "walk" over the cell surface was previously proposed, but their paper provides the first experimental evidence that this is the case.
This is also the first time that scientists have made actual images showing how the virus's tail extends into the host ? the very action that allows it to infect a cell with its DNA.
"I first hypothesized that T7 made an extended tail more than 10 years ago," said Molineux, "but this is the first irrefutable experimental evidence for the idea and provides the first images of what it looks like."
The researchers used a combination of genetics and cryo-electron tomography to image the infection process. Cryo-electron tomography is a process similar to a CT scan, but it is scaled to study objects with a diameter a thousandth the thickness of a human hair.
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University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu
Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
How often do you collaborate with your risk-management counterparts at your organization? You should be doing so on a regular basis, according to Lowers Risk Group, a consulting firm with about 1,000 global clients. We?ve covered the issue of risk and human capital before, including this byline and this cover story. Now, a?new whitepaper from Lowers highlights what it?believes are key trends ?driving the expanding role of human resources in enterprise risk management.?
Vince Pascarella, who has an SPHR and is vice president of Lowers Risk Group, has this to say:
Executives tend to rank human capital very high in terms of the potential impact on business results ? often ahead?of financial risks ? but few believethey are managing human capital risk?effectively. Most risks begin and end with people, so it?s not surprising to find that human resources is increasingly being called to the table to help mitigate risk.?
The whitepaper is free but requires registration, so I?ll summarize some of the key points and then you can decide whether to delve deeper. First, it cites a Deloitte report that finds a number of trends are leading to a greater focus on human capital risk management: ?Black swans,? or low-probability events that have far-reaching impact (including the Euro crisis, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the tsunami in Japan, the Middle East uprisings) and??people risks? such as fraud, theft and security breaches that end up making headlines. The view of what constitutes human capital risks is expanding, the whitepaper notes, and now includes four ?manageable areas of HCM?:
1. regulatory compliance
2. position risk level
3. management risk tolerance levels, and
4. onboarding issues ?that may allow individuals to fall through the cracks.?
This new awareness of risk is, according to the whitepaper, leading HR to collaborate more closely with their risk-management brethren and create a ?risk mindset? for day-to-day HR activities. HR must also ?make the most of its existing data? to help identify potential risks.
Assuming you've already caught up on Samsung's press event from yesterday, now may be a good time to see what NVIDIA unveiled at CES 2013 from the comfort of your own home, office or any other internet-connect place you might be. Naturally, you'll catch a glimpse of all of NVIDIA's unveilings, including that shiny new Tegra 4 processor and the company's Project Shield gaming console. Surely there will be a few more for you to watch in the coming days, so head over to the source link below to catch the chip maker's event in its entirety and scratch that one off your list of things to watch.
If the keyboards we sawin the run up to CES told us anything, it's that you ain't a serious gamer unless your keys be lit. We guess it's a good thing, then, that the two new 'boards SteelSeries has brought to the show -- the Apex and Apex [RAW] -- aren't lacking that all-important backlighting. Both feature low-riding main keys, an extra-fat space bar, a bunch of macro keys, some extra arrow keys, and various other tricks and treats to give you the upper hand in-game. Despite the [RAW] sounding cooler, it's actually the lower-spec model, with a few less macro keys / options and only white backlights. The Apex 'proper' (pictured above) adds a couple of USB ports to the frame, multicolor backlighting with "ActiveZones" for painting different sections distinct hues, and extra customization options for "more ways to win." SteelSeries' Engine software manages your setup -- profiles, macros, lighting and such -- as well as recording keystroke stats if that's your bag. The Apex and Apex [RAW] won't be hitting stores until Q2 this year, but when they do, expect them to set you back $100 / $70, respectively.
The newest right-to-work state is also the latest to ban companies from accessing password-protected social media accounts.
In late December, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed House Bill 5523, prohibiting employers and educational institutions from asking applicants, employees and students for passwords and other account information used to access private Internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Here?s the skinny.?An employer cannot:
Request an employee or an applicant for employment to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose information that allows access to or observation of the employee?s or applicant?s personal internet account.
Discharge, discipline, fail to hire, or otherwise penalize an employee or applicant for employment for failure to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose information that allows access to or observation of the employee?s or applicant?s personal internet account.
However, the new law specifically permits an employer to access:
Employer-provided devices;
Business-related online accounts;
Employee social-media accounts in connection with certain workplace investigations.
Employers can also continue to restrict access to certain websites and monitor employee communications on its network.
Michigan is the fourth state (Maryland, Illinois and California are the others) to pass a law of this type affecting employers.
This was originally published on Eric B. Meyer?s blog,?The Employer Handbook.
Eric B. Meyer is a partner in the Labor and Employment Group of the Philadelphia-based law firm of Dilworth Paxson LLP . He dedicates his practice to litigating and assisting employers on labor and employment issues affecting the workplace, including collective bargaining, discrimination, employee handbook policies, enforcement of restrictive covenants, and trade secret protection. Eric also serves as a volunteer mediator for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Contact him at emeyer@dilworthlaw.com .
Gamers quite literally "see the light" with Roccat's new Ryos MK Pro keyboard.
Of all the products Roccat offers, a mechanical plank was curiously missing. Until now, that is. The German peripheral maker on Friday introduced the Ryos MK Pro, the company's first mechanical keyboard designed for gamers. In addition to mechanical key switches, the Ryos MK Pro features per-key lighting, two 32-bit ARM Cortex processors, and 2MB of flash memory. Can we say overkill?
That's apparently not in Roccat's vocabulary. Roccat says the dual-ARM chips help initiate the keyboard's advanced features without sacrificing an ounce of performance, and the 2MB of flash memory allows games to store their custom configurations.
The per-key lighting system can serve as a functional aid or simply as a novelty feature.
"The Ryos MK Pro offers totally customizable, Roccat-engineered per-key illumination in two convenient modes: smart and manual. This means you can add awesome special effects to your keystrokes, configure your keyboard to highlight your in-game and application key bindings, your modifier keys, your macro sequences and cool downs, your system controls, and much, much more," Roccat explains. "The included software development kit ensures that only your imagination is the limit."
Perhaps the neatest thing about Roccat's mechanical plank is you have your choice of four different Cherry MX key switches, including Blue, Black, Brown, or Red. These have a direct impact on how the keyboard sounds and feels. If you crave tactile and audible feedback, for example, Cherry MX Blue switches have your name written all over them, whereas Cherry MX Red are best suited for gamers who want a quiet plank.
The Ryos MK Pro will be available in the first quarter of this year. No word yet on price.
In this Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 photo, Jeffrey Shaman poses for a portrait in his office at Columbia University's Department of Environmental Health Sciences in New York. In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season. Scientists hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
In this Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 photo, Jeffrey Shaman poses for a portrait in his office at Columbia University's Department of Environmental Health Sciences in New York. In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season. Scientists hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
FILE - In this Friday, May 11, 2007 photo, a mosquito is sorted according to species and gender before testing for West Nile Virus at the Dallas County mosquito lab in Dallas. Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.
That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.
In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict ? more than seven weeks in advance ? when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.
Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.
At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.
This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.
Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.
As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.
Some models have been labeled successes.
In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.
"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.
More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever ? a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.
Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.
"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.
Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.
Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.
"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.
Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting ? there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.
Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.
In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.
They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).
Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.
"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.
Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.
Mayo Clinic researchers find new molecule to target in pancreatic cancer treatmentPublic release date: 3-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Punsky punsky.kevin@mayo.edu 904-953-2299 Mayo Clinic
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have identified a new target to improve treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cancer, which accounts for more than 95 percent of pancreatic cancer cases. This fast-growing, often lethal cancer is resistant to conventional chemotherapy. The findings are published in the Jan. 3 online issue of PLOS ONE.
The researchers decoded a molecular pathway that is switched "on" at all times, promoting accelerated growth of pancreatic tumors, and that discovery revealed ways to disable the pathway. They say one strategy could involve the use of the drug bortezomib, which is already approved for several human blood cancers.
"Targeting this pathway to decrease the proliferation of cancer cells may represent a new strategy for pancreatic cancer therapy," says the study's senior investigator, Peter Storz, Ph.D., a biochemist and molecular biologist at Mayo Clinic.
One feature of pancreatic cancer is increased activity of the transcription factor NF-kB, which turns on expression of genes that keep the cells proliferating and protect them from death. There are two pathways, known as the classical and alternative, by which NF-kB can be activated, and the researchers looked at the alternative pathway one in which NF-kB is activated differently, and which switches on other genes, compared to the classical signaling pathway. Both the classical and alternative pathways are active in pancreatic cancer.
The research team discovered that increased activity of the alternative NF-kB pathway results from suppression of TNF receptor-associated factor 2, or TRAF2. Loss of TRAF2 promotes fast growth of pancreatic tumors and correlates with increased aggressiveness, Dr. Storz says.
They tested this discovery in 55 human samples of pancreatic cancer, and found that in 69 percent, TRAF2 wasn't functioning properly and there were higher levels of other molecules participating in the alternative pathway.
A cocktail of drugs that includes chemotherapy, bortezomib and other inhibitors of molecules activated along the pathway may help pancreatic cancer patients, Dr. Storz says.
"Of course, this hypothesis requires extensive clinical testing, but our findings offer a new direction to investigate in improving treatment of pancreatic cancer," he says.
###
The research team includes cancer biologists Heike Dppler and Geou-Yarh Liou, Ph.D. from Mayo Clinic in Florida. The study was funded by grants from the American Association for Cancer Research and the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers CA135102, CA140182 and P50CA102701).
About Mayo Clinic Cancer Center
As a leading institution funded by the National Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center conducts basic, clinical and population science research, translating discoveries into improved methods for prevention, diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. For information on cancer clinical trials, call 507-538-7623.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit www.mayoclinic.com and www.mayoclinic.org/news.
Journalists can become a member of the Mayo Clinic News Network for the latest health, science and research news and access to video, audio, text and graphic elements that can be downloaded or embedded.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mayo Clinic researchers find new molecule to target in pancreatic cancer treatmentPublic release date: 3-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Punsky punsky.kevin@mayo.edu 904-953-2299 Mayo Clinic
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have identified a new target to improve treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cancer, which accounts for more than 95 percent of pancreatic cancer cases. This fast-growing, often lethal cancer is resistant to conventional chemotherapy. The findings are published in the Jan. 3 online issue of PLOS ONE.
The researchers decoded a molecular pathway that is switched "on" at all times, promoting accelerated growth of pancreatic tumors, and that discovery revealed ways to disable the pathway. They say one strategy could involve the use of the drug bortezomib, which is already approved for several human blood cancers.
"Targeting this pathway to decrease the proliferation of cancer cells may represent a new strategy for pancreatic cancer therapy," says the study's senior investigator, Peter Storz, Ph.D., a biochemist and molecular biologist at Mayo Clinic.
One feature of pancreatic cancer is increased activity of the transcription factor NF-kB, which turns on expression of genes that keep the cells proliferating and protect them from death. There are two pathways, known as the classical and alternative, by which NF-kB can be activated, and the researchers looked at the alternative pathway one in which NF-kB is activated differently, and which switches on other genes, compared to the classical signaling pathway. Both the classical and alternative pathways are active in pancreatic cancer.
The research team discovered that increased activity of the alternative NF-kB pathway results from suppression of TNF receptor-associated factor 2, or TRAF2. Loss of TRAF2 promotes fast growth of pancreatic tumors and correlates with increased aggressiveness, Dr. Storz says.
They tested this discovery in 55 human samples of pancreatic cancer, and found that in 69 percent, TRAF2 wasn't functioning properly and there were higher levels of other molecules participating in the alternative pathway.
A cocktail of drugs that includes chemotherapy, bortezomib and other inhibitors of molecules activated along the pathway may help pancreatic cancer patients, Dr. Storz says.
"Of course, this hypothesis requires extensive clinical testing, but our findings offer a new direction to investigate in improving treatment of pancreatic cancer," he says.
###
The research team includes cancer biologists Heike Dppler and Geou-Yarh Liou, Ph.D. from Mayo Clinic in Florida. The study was funded by grants from the American Association for Cancer Research and the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers CA135102, CA140182 and P50CA102701).
About Mayo Clinic Cancer Center
As a leading institution funded by the National Cancer Institute, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center conducts basic, clinical and population science research, translating discoveries into improved methods for prevention, diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. For information on cancer clinical trials, call 507-538-7623.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit www.mayoclinic.com and www.mayoclinic.org/news.
Journalists can become a member of the Mayo Clinic News Network for the latest health, science and research news and access to video, audio, text and graphic elements that can be downloaded or embedded.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Best I can tell the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, which prevents underwater homeowners from having to pay income tax on the phantom income generated when their mortgage lender forgives a portion of their mortgage, was extended as part of the fiscal cliff deal that was approved by the house of representatives last night. Originally, it was set to expire on December 31, 2012 but the version of the fiscal cliff deal passed by the Senate extended the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, as reported by the National Association of Realtors yesterday.
The House of Representatives essentially approved this deal last night but the reason I'm hedging here is because I can't be sure that I have found the final version of the bill and I'm not very familiar with the legislative process or the making of sausage. Does this have to go back to the Senate because changes were made? However, numerous sources are reporting today that this tax break has been preserved and I found this section in the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 on the House of Representatives site which pertains to this issue. If this is a done deal I know a lot of underwater homeowners are breathing a sigh of relief today.
Healthy Recipes: Spicy Carrot and Coriander Soup ? FemaleFirst.co.uk
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(Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc's Nook unit reported weak holiday season numbers on Thursday as it sold fewer e-readers and tablets at its own stores, and its e-books sales growth slowed, raising questions about the future of its digital business.
The Nook, launched in 2009 to compete with Amazon.com Inc's market-leading Kindle, has been the cornerstone of Barnes & Noble's strategy to counter the shift by many book readers to digital books. Early growth attracted a big investment last year from Microsoft Corp.
And last week, British education and media publisher Pearson Plc said it would take a 5 percent stake in Barnes & Noble's Nook Media unit, which also includes its college bookstore chain, giving it a $1.8 billion value, about double the company's value as a whole.
But questions swirled about whether it is worth that much, after the retailer said that the Nook segment's revenue fell 12.6 percent from a year earlier during the nine weeks ended December 29, hurt by lower unit sales and prices.
Sales of digital content like e-books and magazines rose 13.1 percent during the holidays, a much slower pace than the 38 percent gain last quarter and 113 percent in the 2011 holiday season, suggesting Barnes & Noble is having trouble holding on to its 25-30 percent share of the U.S. e-books market.
"We are way beyond the point where you should see content sales accelerate," Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom told Reuters. "That hasn't materialized and that's concerning."
The numbers were all the more disappointing given that in late November, Barnes & Noble had told investors Nook device sales doubled over the Black Friday weekend, which follows Thanksgiving and kicks off the holiday season in earnest.
That suggests the rest of season was a debacle, analysts said, and Chief Executive William Lynch said in a statement that Barnes & Noble is "examining the root cause" of the shortfall and will adjust its strategy.
"The investment question for Barnes & Noble in 2013 is the Nook's staying power as a legitimate tablet device," Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter wrote in the note, predicting the retailer will face stiffer competition this year from the likes of Apple Inc and Google Inc, since tablets now have improved functions that make them more appealing to book readers.
The drop in Nook sales came despite the launch of two well-reviewed high-definition Nook tablets in October and promotions at large chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, both of which stopped selling Kindles last year.
Despite the holiday results, Barnes & Noble still expects Nook Media sales of $3 billion this fiscal year, keeping a forecast it gave in October.
That steady forecast helped lift shares 2.6 percent to $14.88 in morning trading.
The company will report full quarterly results in late February.
The results follow a warning from Barnes & Noble in a filing last week that holiday sales would come in below its expectations. The warning erased most of the gains in its share price that followed the news of Pearson's investment.
FEWER VISITORS IN STORES
Compounding Barnes & Noble's troubles, fewer shoppers came into its bookstores during the Christmas period.
Barnes & Noble, which had enjoyed a sales bump after onetime rival Borders Group liquidated in 2011, reported a 10.9 percent decrease in sales at its bookstores and on its website over the holiday period.
Sales at stores open at least 15 months fell 3.1 percent, excluding Nook products, despite the benefit of some store closings -- Barnes & Noble operates 689 bookstores, 14 fewer than a year ago.
"The Borders tailwind is over," Morningstar's Wahlstrom said.
(Reporting by Phil Wahba in New York; editing by John Wallace and Nick Zieminski)
Yahoo plans to compete on mobile by way of partnerships, not hardware or operating systems, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told Bloomberg at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where the subject of the talk was the future of Yahoo's business. The talk also delved into other areas of focus, including Yahoo's homepage, media properties, and where it could compete on search and personalization going forward.
How often do you collaborate with your risk-management counterparts at your organization? You should be doing so on a regular basis, according to Lowers Risk Group, a consulting firm with about 1,000 global clients. We?ve covered the issue of risk and human capital before, including this byline and this cover story. Now, a?new whitepaper from Lowers highlights what it?believes are key trends ?driving the expanding role of human resources in enterprise risk management.?
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![SteelSeries announces Apex and Apex [RAW] gaming keyboards (yes, the keys are backlit)](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s4hKm6VxGVjSdV8CZuPOb2hZjg5QI7n3KO6A3q4YapgF-MRXvBBwMOxNnYAcdoupqn49y5NvnrbsQtwZ8hRSQfR4oBIL0E_H26SSD6UTpPjBVanMNfuPMbwhRD8D9EjbNiapFo=s0-d)
Gamers quite literally "see the light" with Roccat's new Ryos MK Pro keyboard.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sQ8urii5T-aHbxPnU6TPVZ3hLbQQ7qcuNzf0_d3YaeRyDlTDqVP4CI9y-0gLAVpU2rgWftkfOWsLmdecZVHq-ibVPQgx3Hea3uvIA4pvk=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 3-Jan-2013
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