EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) ? An Indiana dog that became an Internet sensation after crashing a half marathon has won a medal ? and an appointment with a veterinarian to nip his wandering ways in the bud.
The chocolate Labrador retriever named Boogie ran most of the 13.1 miles in Saturday's Evansville event and then was taken to Animal Control.
Owner Jerry Butts tells the Evansville Courier & Press (http://bit.ly/17dIIR1 ) that the 100-pound dog slipped his leash Friday night. It was his fourth escape.
Butts says Boogie now has a microchip and an appointment to be neutered.
Boogie finished the race in 2 hours, 15 minutes. That's better than more than half of the race's participants.
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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com
PARIS (AP) ? Telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA said Tuesday that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years, the latest cost-cutting drive from the loss-making company.
The job cuts are part of a restructuring plan to make the French-American company more competitive. The plan is to reduce fixed costs by cutting 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion), or about 15 percent, by the end of 2015. Under the plan, the company will reallocate research investment to next-generation technology and cut investment in older technology.
The company has struggled since its inception in 2006, when France's Alcatel and the U.S.'s Lucent merged. The savings anticipated by combining research and development costs and reducing staff were quickly offset by pressure to lower prices amid increasing competition from the likes of China's Huawei Technologies Co. and Ericsson AB of Sweden. Last year, the company lost 1.37 billion euros ($1.86 billion), and a new chief executive took over earlier this year.
Alcatel said the job cuts would be presented to its European works council on Tuesday. The cuts will come from all of the regions in which the company operates: 4,100 positions will be cut in its Europe, Middle East and Africa region, 3,800 in the Asia-Pacific zone and 2,100 in the Americas.
In a sign that the layoffs will likely face stiff resistance, especially in Europe, elected officials from western France, the site of an Alcatel-Lucent plant, urged the company to abandon the restructuring plan. The officials said in a statement that they feared the local plant would be closed and accused the company of reneging on promises to keep it open.
Investors appeared at first glance to be backing the plan. The company's share price was trading 1.5 percent higher in morning trading in Paris.
Normally, when new Android versions are released to the world, Android fans such as ourselves don?t head to the Downloads app to look for any new goodies. However, when the Downloads app is about to undergo a complete graphical redesign, we pay attention. As we continue towards the next batch of Nexus devices and the inevitable Android 4.4. KitKat release, the pace for leaks has quickened. Let?s take a look at what we have this time around.
Pictured above, you can see the side by side differences between the leaked UI and the current Jelly Bean UI.
New Holo Light theme instead of Holo Dark. A white, light theme matches other core Google apps and seems to fit quite nicely with other leaks depicting a whiter Android UI.
The Downloads icon is now much cleaner and flatter.
The action bar also includes two new icons. The icon with the three lines most likely contains sorting options for sorting by file size or by date. ?The four square dots icon is most likely for changing the view from displaying files line by line, to a cards view, similar to how Google Drive currently looks and functions as shown below.
Do you like the new Holo Light theme with flatter icons that seem to be the theme with Android 4.4? Let us know in the comments.
By Atmadip Ray, ET Bureau | 6 Sep, 2013, 07.32PM IST
Kolkata: India's foreign exchange reserves have dipped to $275.5 billion, a 39-month low, as Reserve Bank of India continued to sell dollars to support the battered local currency.
The rupee has come under come under severe pressure and been the worst performing Asian currency since global investors offloaded their investment in emerging economies to maximise return from rising US bond prices after the Federal Reserve withdrew quantitative easing.
The rupee depreciated about 27% since April to its record closing low of 68.80 a dollar on August 28. In comparison, Indonesian rupiah fell about 12% this year while Malaysian Ringgit saw 8% depreciation. Japanese yen fell 11.6% this year.
The rupee has however recovered since August 28 level on strong RBI action and improved sentiment after governor Raghuram Rajan took measures aiming to boost dollar inflows. The rupee closed Friday at 65.25 a dollar, nearly 110 paise higher than Thursday's close.
"The sentiment in the market has definitely improved," a forex dealer with a foreign bank said. RBI under Rajan has subsidised swap cost to attract FCNR-B deposits and enhanced limits for exporters to re-book cancelled forward exchange contracts to attract inflows. Rajan's decision to roll back the amount a company can use to invest overseas to 400% of its networth, from 100%, has also made investors' easy.
The forex reserves dipped $2.2 billion in the week ending August 30 to $275.5 billion. In rupee terms, it gained Rs 450 billion to Rs 18.341 billion due to exchange rate movement.
Foreign currency assets feel $3.080 billion to $247.402 billion, Reserve Bank of India said in its weekly report. Foreign currency assets expressed in dollar terms include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies such as euro, pound and yen held in the reserves.
RBI said that the value of country's gold reserve has risen by 977 million to $21,724 billion. India is still a creditor to International Monetary Fund's reserve position although the position fell $113 million to $1.990 billion in the period under review.
Each week the editors at iMore find cool media that we really love and bring it to you. Here's our latest roundup - some great music, movies, cartoons and more.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Special Edition soundtrack - Joseph Keller
I love a good soundtrack. Howard Shore's work from the Lord of the Rings trilogy is some of my favorite movie music. It helps define the world we see, and is a major part of what made those movies what they were. While not on the same scale, Shore's Hobbit soundtrack fills the same role. Weaving familiar themes in with new ones, The Hobbit soundtrack is a perfect audio companion to An Unexpected Journey, and as much a prequel to Rings as the rest of the movie. The special edition of the soundtrack is an expanded version of the original release, with six additional tracks. If you love Shore's work, this is the version to get.
Up until about 6 months ago, I had never seen a single Bourne movie. People kept telling me how good they were and I had every intention of watching them, just never actually got around to it. Then I noticed that iTunes had the entire collection of Bourne movies in HD as a bundle for $40 which means each movie was only $10.
In the end, I watched all of them within one weekend and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. The last one was my least favorite but it was still good. Either way, if you've never seen them or you're a Bourne fan, it's a great deal to take advantage of if you don't already own any of them.
My Little Pony: Micro Series #7 - Cutie Mark Crusaders - Michelle Haag
My 10 year old daughter is obsessed with My Little Pony, just as I was when I was her age. Unfortunately, unlike me, she doesn't enjoy reading books, so I've been trying to find things for her to read that will hold her attention. Luckily there are a ton of My Little Pony comics and books in iTunes, ranging in price from $1.99 to $9.99. Some of our favorites are in the micro series, with each edition devoted to a specific character, or in this case, group of characters. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are on a quest to find out who they are, and they'll never stop their journey, not until they find their cutie marks! If you have a young lady in your life that loves MLP as much as mine does, you know they will really appreciate learning about the magic of friendship with these beautifully done books.
Although The Incredible Mr. Limpet came out long before my time, it pretty much became a cult hit for a lot of folks and after having recently watched it, I can see why. This comedy/fantasy stars Don Knotts as a nervous little Brooklyn bookkeeper who has an overwhelming love for fish. After being rejected by the Navy, he actually becomes a fish (through the miracle of animation), meets a snail who shows him the "underwater" ropes, falls in love with a lady fish, and becomes a real war hero. Sounds crazy, right? It is but it's fantastic. Sadly, it's not available for purchase on iTunes but you can rent it for $2.99.
As the dust starts to settle after Tuesday?s announcement that Nokia Corp. is selling its handset business to Microsoft Corp., investors are waking up to a new leaner company with arguably brighter prospects than the old beleaguered business.
Nokia?s handset business used to be the glorious centerpiece of a global technology heavyweight, but its fall from grace the past few years has been rapid and brutal.
Here is a roundup of what analysts around the globe have to say about Nokia?s NSN networks unit and HERE mapping business.
In a note on Wednesday, Nordea's Sami Sarkamies said the sale of the handset business to Microsoft for ?5.4 billion? ?marks the end to one of the worst corporate strategies we will probably experience.? While noting that the reasoning behind Nokia?s tie-up with Microsoft two years ago will continue to debated, Nordea said Nokia got a fair price for the assets given the circumstances, and that it?s now able to kiss goodbye to its worries and start anew as a ?solid, smaller version of Ericsson.?
Mr. Sarkamies added that the new Nokia should now be seen as a likely acquisition target, especially for Samsung Electronics Co. The Korean company has been looking to expand its mobile network infrastructure operations and buying Nokia would be a good opportunity to gain a position on the U.S. market with a solid product portfolio. ? Putting all this together, we see more upside in the share from both an absolute perspective as well as a relative performance potential perspective versus Ericsson,? Mr. Sarkamies said.
Deutsche Bank?s Kai Korschelt said the Microsoft deal is a good outcome for shareholders, although he is concerned about an expected decline of NSN profits in the second part of this year and in 2014. Mr. Korschelt estimates that Nokia in the first quarter of next year will have net cash of around ?7.5 billion, which raises the prospect of a significant windfall for shareholders. If Nokia keeps ?5 billion for general purposes and potential acquisitions, ?excess net cash available for return to shareholders could be ?2.5 billion or a potential cash yield of 15%.? The bank has upgraded its rating to hold from sell.
After disposing the handset business, ?Nokia flips from loss making to profitability,? Jefferies analysts Lee Simpson and Robert Lamb said. Nokia will effectively become a profitable, telecom equipment pure-play, they say, and upgrade their rating to hold from underperform. ?The Microsoft deal also means that cash fears abate, and helps Nokia?s buyout of Siemens? stake in Nokia Siemens Networks. ?There is an additional ?1.5 billion of financing from [Microsoft] to be taken up at Nokia?s discretion,? Jefferies said.
However, Alexander Peterc and Alexandre Faure at Exane BNP Paribas expressed some caution. Although the new company appears clean, profitable and financially stable, the analysts said there is still a risk that the Microsoft deal is delayed or derailed by wary Microsoft shareholders. The bank upgraded its rating to neutral from underperform.
Finally, long-time Nokia bear Pierre Ferragu at Bernstein admitted that the Microsoft deal is ?the one event we thought could not happen.? ?He added that from Nokia?s perspective, the Microsoft deal seems ?very advantageously structured and offers a lot of upside? ?to Bernstein?s valuation framework.? Instead of being stuck with a devices business that would have burnt lots of cash in restructuring and barely returned to breakeven, Nokia has ?offloaded its problem child to Microsoft and is left with an interesting string of assets, including a highly profitable patent portfolio, an astonishing ?7.8 billion net cash on its balance sheet and a stabilizing wireless equipment maker. Bernstein upgraded Nokia to market-perform from underperform.
A group of institutional investors, including money managers and corporate governance officials at U.K and Swedish pension funds, is calling on Canadian regulators to increase public disclosure by Canadian energy and mining firms and to create a consistent global standard for all significant tax and royalty payments made by those companies across their global operations.
Such disclosure was mandated in the European Union's transparency and accounting directives in June, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced plans at the G-8 Summit that month to follow suit with similar regulations for Canadian-listed mining and energy companies, according to a news release from
F&C Asset Management, which co-wrote a letter to Natural Resources Canada, the agency overseeing natural resources policy in Canada.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act included similar provisions, although a July ruling by the U.S. District Court in Washington stopped the implementation of that part of the law. The group has also written to the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to adopt a global standard.
The letters were sponsored by
F&C Asset Management,
Aviva Investors and SNS Asset Management, and were signed by 32 institutions with a combined $5.8 trillion in assets.
?This move by Canada is critical for achieving a consistent global transparency standard,? concluded Arne Loow, senior manager and head of corporate governance at the 240.9 billion Swedish kronor ($37 billion) AP4, Stockholm in the F&C news release. ?As one of the world's top listing venues for mining stocks, it needs to take its rightful place at the top table by setting a meaningful standard in line with the U.S. and EU. We don't want companies evading tough standards by shopping around for the weakest forum and picking Canada. The fact is that Canada's own mining industry leaders have broken the mold by calling for this: They are the first to recognize the value to the industry of transparent business practice, and we agree.?
?From an investor perspective, the key is reducing risk,? Frank Curtiss, head of corporate governance at RPMI, which oversees the ?18 billion ($27.9 billion) Railways Pension Scheme, London, said in the F&C release. ?The less mystery there is behind these resource deals, the fewer unpleasant surprises we can expect.?
? Contact Rick Baert at rbaert@pionline.com | @Baert_PI
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) ? Most of a lawsuit claiming former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and executives at his failed video game company duped the state's economic development agency into approving a $75 million investment can move forward, a Rhode Island judge ruled Wednesday.
Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein's decision allows the Economic Development Corp. to proceed with its lawsuit against Schilling, former 38 Studios executives, former EDC officials and others. The suit alleges fraud, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, racketeering and conspiracy and says the board was misled into approving a $75 million loan guarantee for the company in 2010.
38 Studios ? named for Schilling's old jersey number ? filed for bankruptcy last year, leaving the state on the hook for $112 million. About $90 million is outstanding.
With the decision, the EDC has cleared the first major hurdle in pursuing potential claims against Schilling and others. Among other things, the lawsuit claims the defendants knew the company would run out of money by 2012, but concealed that from the EDC board, which made the final decision to back the deal.
The agency had used the loan guarantee to lure 38 Studios from Maynard, Mass., to Rhode Island, which has struggled for years with a bad economy and high unemployment.
Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who opposed the deal before he took office and who serves as EDC board chairman, said he was "gratified" by the ruling.
"It allows the important claims to proceed and is a significant first step to recovering the taxpayers' losses," he said in a statement.
Jeffrey Schreck, who represents Schilling and others at 38 Studios, declined to comment. Schilling has previously called the lawsuit political and denied wrongdoing. He said at the time the suit was filed that the EDC's approval of the loan guarantee was made "with its eyes wide open and with full understanding of any risks." Schilling has accused Chafee of not doing enough to help 38 Studios stay afloat and publicly called him a "dunce of epic proportions."
The EDC sued in November, naming 14 defendants. Nine of those worked for the agency, including former Executive Director Keith Stokes and former Deputy Director Michael Saul, as well as its attorneys and financial advisers. Four of the defendants were executives or on the board at 38 Studios, including Schilling. The final defendant issued an insurance policy to 38 Studios.
The defendants moved to dismiss all or parts of the lawsuit, and the judge rejected most of their arguments.
The suit doesn't seek a specific dollar amount but wants repayment of the $75 million in bonds that supported the deal. It seeks triple damages from some of the defendants, including Schilling.
In his ruling, Silverstein said the state can't immediately sue to recover the entire $75 million because it hasn't lost that much. The bonds are being repaid over time. But the judge said the EDC might have a claim for future losses if and when the General Assembly approves the payments. He also said the agency could sue for fees and salaries paid to the defendants and damage to its reputation and credit.
The legislature this year appropriated an initial $2.5 million for payments on the bonds.
Max Wistow, an EDC lawyer, said he was "quite pleased" by the decision and looks forward to moving ahead with the case. In court, Wistow has described a "fraudulent scheme" in which the defendants both withheld information and provided false information.
Attorneys for Stokes and Saul argued they should be immune from liability under the "public duty" doctrine because they were public officials who were doing their jobs and following orders, but the judge ruled the doctrine doesn't apply in a case where an employer is suing an employee. Saul's attorney, Bruce Gladstone, said his client is disappointed by the ruling but called the judge's finding that the EDC cannot now recover a $75 million loss "well-reasoned."
Silverstein dismissed some counts against Barclay's and Wells Fargo, which acted as bond placement agents for the EDC, and Starr Indemnity and Liability Company, which issued an insurance policy for 38 Studios.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 13.
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Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith contributed to this report.
Andy Fisher, a systems engineer for GE, holds up a century-old light bulb. Note how the light bulbs in your house look pretty similar.
After a century of progress in tech, the light bulb remains the same, perhaps the most enduring of backward technology in use on a large scale.
The federally mandated phase-out of inefficient bulbs has met with intense resistance, from the Tea Party to panicked buyers stockpiling a lifetime of the classic A-Line incandescent, with its "warm" glow.
But beyond paranoid rhetoric is nostalgia: More than one hundred years after Thomas Edison's breakthrough, most consumers still want their light bulbs in the traditional pear shape. But creating an efficient light bulb in the traditional shape -- and that gives off that same warm light consumers have become accustomed to -- is proving tough for manufacturers.
(Read more:?11 ways your daily routine will never be the same again)
The pear shape no longer represents a vital production but is still what many people want to see on store shelves.
"Lighting is an art and a science. The appearance of fixtures and bulbs becomes part of our culture, and when you try to change culture, you better have a strong reason to do so," said Terry McGowan, a former manager of the lighting division at?GE who now serves as director of engineering for the American Lighting Association.
The light bulb of old, McGowan said, was significant because you could ?bounce it on the floor and it will not break.
?It will bounce like a ball.?
The classic form also houses several tricky engineering problems (the need for a heat sink and lighting quality that recreates the diffuse, "warm" light to which homes lit by incandescent bulbs have become accustomed). Companies are still working on design and engineering solutions to these challenges within an LED frame.
How to make an appealing LED light has divided manufacturers. The competition is a once-in-an-era opportunity, as LED bulbs can provide up to 25,000 hours of residential use.
"How we transition to CFL [compact fluorescent] bulbs and LEDs is a billion-dollar question," said Todd Manegold, director of LED lamps at Philips. Billion, literally: There are about 5.6 billion light bulbs in U.S. residential use.
(Read more:?The booming business of 3-D printing)
"Manufacturers are trying to capture these billions of sockets now residing with incandescent bulbs," McGowan said. "And you have to be the size and shape of what's in those sockets. If you don't get that socket now, it won't be available again until who knows when. It's a desperate horse race."
John Stranick, head of GE's North American consumer lighting business, said the classic A-line shape is one that consumers grew up with. Although inefficient, he said, it diffuses heat well and has a nice light quality.
GE's experience with compact flourescents showed that even after the company had worked out start-up time and warmth problems, consumers would reject them based on design.
"Even before we got to LEDs, we had to replicate that iconic shape," Stranick said.
(Read more:?Crowdfund this: Medical devices)
McGowan of the American Lighting Association said Phillips has been "carefully treading the line between appearance and function" and has managed to make LED lighting interesting, even if it can be argued that won't be the quickest route to mass adoption.
Advanced Lumonics has a museum with two examples of every LED bulb ever made, a kind of Noah's Ark of LED history, including "corncob" and "snowcone" designs. The "scrapped" designs of LEDs' early days also include external "fins" used as an approach to the heat sink issues, and colored phosphor coatings over the bulb exterior as an approach to light diffusion?LEDs by nature emit light in one direction, while a residence typically requires an omni-directional lighting source.
Costigliola said Cree wants to make a bulb with the Edison shape, and that the company's sales data may show that for mass adoption to take place, the standard shape needs to be a big part of the equation.
"The Cree bulb isn't a show-off," he said, compared with a higher-priced Switch "liquid-cooled" bulb, or a Philips' Wi-Fi-enabled Hue bulb or LED lighting fixture?the latter costing several hundred dollars. Though he stressed that price remains king: When Philips lowered the price on its yellow phosphor-coated LED bulbs, a technical solution Philips has since moved away from in newer designs, EarthLED.com saw a bump in orders, able to "move 4,000 a month on Amazon."
McGowan said that it's easy to lose sight of the historical fact that no light source ever invented has completely disappeared.
"The Amish have nothing but kerosene lamps in their living rooms," he said. "The consumer can't be dictated to in lighting, and the faux old-fashioned bulbs with carbon filaments that glow are very popular now. It's appearance lighting, not efficient lighting."
"LEDs won't take over 100 percent of the market. All these technologies will exist, but comfort level will dictate how much adoption there is, and if you make it familiar it accelerates the comfort level," he said.
June 14, 2013 ? By identifying a protein that acts as a genetic modifier, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have solved the mystery of why some infants are born with a grave syndrome consisting of cleft palate and major deformities of the skin and limbs, while other infants bearing the same predisposing genetic mutation bear little or no sign of the illness, called EEC.
EEC stands for "Ectodactyly, Ectodermal dysplasia, Clefting syndrome." It is rare in its full-blown form, although individual aspects of the associated pathology, such as cleft palate, are more common.
EEC has a known genetic culprit, a single-"letter" DNA mutation in a gene called p63. This error causes a mutation in the p63 protein that the gene encodes. EEC is autosomal dominant, meaning that only one parent needs to contribute the defective copy of the gene for a child to develop the illness. When one parent carries the mutant gene, each child has a 50% chance of having EEC.
"But the big question is why some children with the mutation have severe birth defects, while others -- in some cases, siblings of those affected -- who bear the same p63 mutation, are mostly or entirely symptom-free," says Professor Alea Mills, Ph.D., the CSHL geneticist who led the team that has just solved this mystery.
A complex series of genetic experiments directed by Mills reveals that the presence or absence of one variant type of the p63 protein, called TAp63, determines whether or not a child with the p63 mutation will in fact develop EEC pathology. TAp63 normally protects from the birth defects, and if it is not present, pathology is certain to occur, the team's experiments showed.
Solving the mystery of variable pathology
In 1999, Mills made the first genetic "knock-out" model for p63, in mice, putting the p63 gene on the map. Mice completely lacking the p63 gene were born with birth defects similar to the severest symptoms that characterize EEC in humans. Now, with a grant from The March of Dimes Foundation, Mills' team is the first to make a "knock-in" mouse model of EEC in which they replaced the normal p63 gene with a version bearing the single-letter mutation that causes EEC in people.
"We've made the very first mouse model of human EEC syndrome," notes Emma Vernersson Lindahl, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of a paper appearing today in the American Journal of Medical Genetics that announces the team's results. "These mice, like babies born with EEC, showed a range of birth defects, fully recapitulating the range of defects that one sees in the human syndrome," she says.
To solve the mystery of variable pathology, the CSHL team tested the idea that the p63 protein itself controlled or "modified" EEC's manifestation in different individuals. The scenario they tested and which proved successful was this: mice with the EEC-causing p63 mutation were crossed to mice engineered to lack TAp63, one of the two major classes of p63 proteins. Those with both genetic changes consistently had features of EEC.
Most genes generate instructions for manufacturing proteins; precisely how the gene is turned on or its message edited affects which versions of structurally distinct proteins are manufactured. All healthy people generate both major classes of p63 proteins. TAp63 proved to be the class of p63 protein that modifies EEC features. Mice lacking TAp63 did not have any pathology, which means that TAp63 loss alone is not responsible for the syndrome. But when mice lacking TAp63 also possess the EEC-causing p63 gene mutation, pathology always occurs.
This work suggests that levels of the TAp63 protein determine whether children that have inherited one copy of the EEC-causing mutation from one of their parents are born with birth defects. Mills speculates that when levels of TAp63 drop beneath a certain threshold, it is no longer protective, opening the way to pathology.
"The only way you can have the EEC mutation and be normal, or have slight symptoms of the illness such as a bit of webbing between two toes, is to have robust amounts of TAp63 protein in cells when and where it is needed, during development," says Mills.
She hopes that her team's discovery that TAp63 affects the presence of birth defects will encourage doctors treating children with EEC to compare those only mildly affected with siblings or other children who have a severe form of the disease. "It will be important to sequence DNA from these children and compare the results. What's different? If we find differences, we have nailed it. If we find that ???the sequences are exactly the same, then we might look at several factors regulating gene expression for evidence of how TAp63 is expressed differently in each group."
True story: When I was in middle school, my mother sat my brother and me down at the dining room table to give us lessons from Emily Post's big blue bible called Etiquette. Fold your napkin when you leave the table. Start with the silverware on the outside and work your way in. A lot of those lessons still apply today. But you know what we don't need? Those century-old tropes being applied to how we live our digital lives.
Emily Post's great-great grandson Daniel Post Senning disagrees; just published a guide for online etiquette called Emily Post?s Manners in a Digital World: Living Well Online. And it is... well, it's a little silly. From the introduction:
Photo sharing itself is a huge topic. The etiquette of tagging and posting raises questions about what's respectful, and whether to ask permission before posting.Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn?I'll talk a look at the major sites and their manners and subcultures. Online gaming is one of the biggest internet communities around, with its own rules of engagement. Dating is fast on its heels, though, and we'll talk about the art of finding love online. Never far from anyone's mind (thanks to that smartphone!) is work. Navigating job interviews that might pull up your Facebook page right then and there and avoiding accidental Twitter overshares are just a few of the things that are part of what it means to assess and be smart about digital appropriateness in the workplace today.
A few questions come to mind after reading that. First, what is LinkedIn subculture? Is it like weird Twitter but for professionals? Second, is this how Martha Stewart will navigate Match.com?And if the line about that smartphone didn't kill you, let's get into Senning's know-how on a couple of familiar platforms for those who don't, well, know how:
On how to find something: Need to know something or how to do something? The Google search is a new norm for finding out anything instantly.
On tweeting: Be sure to engage in the back-and-forth of the Twitter conversation.
On friending someone on Facebook: In real life it can be impossible to ignore someone who is reaching out to you. Maybe this is why Facebook changed the option.
On emailing: As a general rule, don?t open e-mails that don?t have a subject line.
On leaving voicemails: Model the behavior you?d like to see in others. (Editor's note: please do not leave voicemails).
Senning's not necessarily wrong, and his advice isn't totally misguided. It just reads with a detachment that you'd expect from someone who doesn't really use the internet at all. You could easily imagine your grandmother sitting in front of a giant old desktop computer reading the book through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on the tip of her nose, nodding sincerely.
We've had the internet long enough that interacting online is turning into a natural thing. Hey, most people don't even lie about online dating anymore. There's no a separate set of instructions for living a life on the internet and living a life outside of that. It's all the same: Be respectful. Be yourself. No punch-backs. If anyone should understand that, it's the people who wrote the book on etiquette in the first place.
The stock market was indicated to open higher Tuesday, as it seemed to shake off weakness in German stocks.
Index futures were slightly higher in the stock market today, while the S&P 500 proxy SPDR Trust (SPY), PowerShares QQQ (QQQ) and the Diamonds (DIA), which mirrors the Dow Jones industrial average, were up 0.1%.
In Europe, a weak reading in German confidence helped bring down German stocks. The DAX index was down 0.3%, but the FTSE 100 climbed 0.2%. France's CAC 40 was off a fraction.
U.S. futures had been lower following the news, but turned higher as the opening bell drew closer.
Solar stocks, which have been hot in recent days, tumbled in premarket trading and were among the most active in pre-opening dealings.
SolarCity (SCTY) plunged 10% after the company reported a loss of 41 cents a share and gave weak guidance. The stock soared 24% Monday to a new high ahead of the earnings report.
Rivals fell in sympathy. First Solar (FSLR) and SunPower (SPWR) were down about 1%.
Cree (CREE) was off 4% in premarket trading after Stern Agee reportedly downgraded the stock. The maker of LED lightbulbs has been at new highs after coming off support at the 10-week moving average.
Tesla Motors (TSLA) was poised to continue its big rally. Last week, it raised its sales outlook, sparking a 41% surge to new highs.
Emotional response to climate change influences whether we seek or avoid further informationPublic release date: 15-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Patricia Donovan pdonovan@buffalo.edu 716-645-4602 University at Buffalo
People with negative feelings toward climate change seek out more information, study finds
BUFFALO, N.Y. Sixty-two percent of Americans now say they believe that global warming is happening, but 46 percent say they are "very sure" or "extremely sure" that it is not. Only 49 percent know why it is occurring, and about as many say they're not worried about it, according to the April report of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
Because information about climate change is ubiquitous in the media, researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Texas, Austin, looked at why many Americans know so little about its causes and why many are not interested in finding out more.
The study, "What, Me Worry? The Role of Affect in Information Seeking and Avoidance" was conducted by Z. Janet Yang, PhD, assistant professor of communication at UB, and Lee Ann Kahlor, PhD, associate professor of public relations and advertising at UT Austin. It was published in the April 2013 issue of the journal Science Communication and is available at http://scx.sagepub.com/content/35/2/189.
Yang says, "Our key variables of interest were 'information seeking' and 'information avoidance.'
"We found that emotions have different impacts on both behaviors and that those with whom we socialize also are an important influence on our communication behaviors."
In particular, according to Yang, the study found:
Those who had negative feelings toward climate change feelings marked by states of fear, depression, anxiety, etc., actively sought more information about climate change. They also saw climate change as having serious risks, and considered their current knowledge about it insufficient.
Those driven by a positive affect toward climate change an emotional state marked by hopefulness, excitement, happiness, etc. actively avoided exposure to additional information on the issue. They also said climate change presented little risk to nature and humans, and they viewed their knowledge about climate change as sufficient.
Our social environment has the potential to strongly influence whether we seek or avoid climate change information. This, the researchers say, may be because we are most often around people who agree with us about important issues, reinforce our perception of risk and support or discourage further action.
The study involved an online survey of 736 undergraduates from two large U.S. universities (61.3 percent female, 62.5 percent white, median family income, $90,000).
The research survey was developed and executed using Qualtrics software and was designed to ascertain:
The subjects' general affect in relation to climate change positive (excited, hopeful, happy) or negative (concerned, worried, anxious)
How much information about climate change they thought they had and how much more they thought they needed
How severe they found the threat of climate change to be to themselves and to nature, and its impact around the world
How valuable they thought seeking information on the subject would be to them
How much they valued others' opinions toward seeking information about climate change
The confidence each had in his or her ability to find information about climate change
"Earlier research in social psychology has found that emotion, both positive and negative, is motivational and involves action tendency and action readiness," Yang explains.
"Those with a negative affect may seek out information, even if it includes negative predictions, in order to reduce their uncertainty and perhaps reassert control over the situation," says Yang.
"On the other hand, those with a positive affect who say they avoid seeking information may do so because they want to maintain their uncertainty and their emotional equilibrium from negative information that might upset them as well as contradict the attitudes of their social support group."
The researchers say the study results present several ways to improve the communication of risk information related to climate change. They say the data on subjects' reported information sufficiency suggests that risk communication about climate change might benefit from these approaches:
Arousing a sense of curiosity and debunking false beliefs about ecological risks so people are not complacent about what they already know
Highlighting potential negative consequences and fostering a positive attitude toward learning about climate change
Monitoring the audience's social environment and its perceived ability for finding and understanding information about climate change
Promoting optimism that human action, such as reducing greenhouse gas, could actually combat the consequences of climate change.
Yang conducts research centered on the communication of risk information related to science, health and environmental issues, and on social cognitive variables that influence information seeking and processing, health decision making and public perception of environmental and health risks.
Kahlor's research is centered on health and environmental risk communication with an emphasis on mass communication of complex science and information seeking.
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Emotional response to climate change influences whether we seek or avoid further informationPublic release date: 15-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Patricia Donovan pdonovan@buffalo.edu 716-645-4602 University at Buffalo
People with negative feelings toward climate change seek out more information, study finds
BUFFALO, N.Y. Sixty-two percent of Americans now say they believe that global warming is happening, but 46 percent say they are "very sure" or "extremely sure" that it is not. Only 49 percent know why it is occurring, and about as many say they're not worried about it, according to the April report of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
Because information about climate change is ubiquitous in the media, researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Texas, Austin, looked at why many Americans know so little about its causes and why many are not interested in finding out more.
The study, "What, Me Worry? The Role of Affect in Information Seeking and Avoidance" was conducted by Z. Janet Yang, PhD, assistant professor of communication at UB, and Lee Ann Kahlor, PhD, associate professor of public relations and advertising at UT Austin. It was published in the April 2013 issue of the journal Science Communication and is available at http://scx.sagepub.com/content/35/2/189.
Yang says, "Our key variables of interest were 'information seeking' and 'information avoidance.'
"We found that emotions have different impacts on both behaviors and that those with whom we socialize also are an important influence on our communication behaviors."
In particular, according to Yang, the study found:
Those who had negative feelings toward climate change feelings marked by states of fear, depression, anxiety, etc., actively sought more information about climate change. They also saw climate change as having serious risks, and considered their current knowledge about it insufficient.
Those driven by a positive affect toward climate change an emotional state marked by hopefulness, excitement, happiness, etc. actively avoided exposure to additional information on the issue. They also said climate change presented little risk to nature and humans, and they viewed their knowledge about climate change as sufficient.
Our social environment has the potential to strongly influence whether we seek or avoid climate change information. This, the researchers say, may be because we are most often around people who agree with us about important issues, reinforce our perception of risk and support or discourage further action.
The study involved an online survey of 736 undergraduates from two large U.S. universities (61.3 percent female, 62.5 percent white, median family income, $90,000).
The research survey was developed and executed using Qualtrics software and was designed to ascertain:
The subjects' general affect in relation to climate change positive (excited, hopeful, happy) or negative (concerned, worried, anxious)
How much information about climate change they thought they had and how much more they thought they needed
How severe they found the threat of climate change to be to themselves and to nature, and its impact around the world
How valuable they thought seeking information on the subject would be to them
How much they valued others' opinions toward seeking information about climate change
The confidence each had in his or her ability to find information about climate change
"Earlier research in social psychology has found that emotion, both positive and negative, is motivational and involves action tendency and action readiness," Yang explains.
"Those with a negative affect may seek out information, even if it includes negative predictions, in order to reduce their uncertainty and perhaps reassert control over the situation," says Yang.
"On the other hand, those with a positive affect who say they avoid seeking information may do so because they want to maintain their uncertainty and their emotional equilibrium from negative information that might upset them as well as contradict the attitudes of their social support group."
The researchers say the study results present several ways to improve the communication of risk information related to climate change. They say the data on subjects' reported information sufficiency suggests that risk communication about climate change might benefit from these approaches:
Arousing a sense of curiosity and debunking false beliefs about ecological risks so people are not complacent about what they already know
Highlighting potential negative consequences and fostering a positive attitude toward learning about climate change
Monitoring the audience's social environment and its perceived ability for finding and understanding information about climate change
Promoting optimism that human action, such as reducing greenhouse gas, could actually combat the consequences of climate change.
Yang conducts research centered on the communication of risk information related to science, health and environmental issues, and on social cognitive variables that influence information seeking and processing, health decision making and public perception of environmental and health risks.
Kahlor's research is centered on health and environmental risk communication with an emphasis on mass communication of complex science and information seeking.
###
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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.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - The lovely dinner meeting with my colleague turned out to be a bad dream. Sure, we had wine with the meal. I loved every moment, morsel, and drop of it.
Yet I was poorly prepared when she not only had wine, but slugged down cognac afterward, and commented that she had preceded our meeting with "a couple of scotches."
I ended up taking her car keys and checking her into the hotel that housed the restaurant where we dined. It all seemed like a dramatic hassle - and then I realized it wasn't over. I had to face this woman again. And what would I say when I did?
It can be a painful experience to watch an associate or friend behave badly after having one too many at a business function or the local watering hole.
So I turned to Todd Whitmer, senior executive officer of the Caron Foundation, a nationally recognized U.S. non-profit addiction treatment center, for advice on how to help my colleague avoid alcohol-related career suicide - or worse.
Talk About How Their Actions Made You Feel
Work is one of the last places a drinking problem will surface, Whitmer says.
But friends and colleagues are likely to know someone is having a problem with alcohol before the boss does, and can help steer him or her away from danger.
Whitmer suggests these steps: If your friend could endanger herself, intervene. Take the car keys, call a cab, or look her in the eye and ask her to leave with you.
Otherwise, wait until she is sober before you try talking to her.
Be specific about what you observed, without accusing.
For example, instead of saying: "You were really drunk last night," try: "I felt embarrassed about the joke you told last night. You don't ordinarily talk like that. Maybe you had too much to drink."
Use "I" language as much as possible. Express your feelings such as alarm, fear, and sadness, not what you think is happening to the other person.
"Although he may argue, he can't deny your feelings," Whitmer says.
Express your concern for your colleague and offer to provide feedback when you see the problem surfacing. Talk to her before the next company gathering, and let her know you will signal when you sense inappropriate behavior coming on.
Offer Help, Not Counseling
For example: "The last time all the managers went out for a drink after the strategic planning meeting, I was afraid, after the third drink, that your remarks about the boss were going to get you into trouble.
I'm feeling some anxiety about tonight's business dinner. If I sense you're getting into dangerous territory, I'm going to give you that feedback. Does that make sense to you? When I say 'Remember what we talked about yesterday?' that's the red flag."
You can certainly show compassion and express your concern, but don't hesitate to say: "I'm not in a position to counsel you about what's going on."
If your company has an employee assistance program, steer her in that direction. If that resource is unavailable, suggest contacting an alcoholism information and treatment center.
Don't Just Look The Other Way
Sometimes being kind means being tough when you protect fellow workers. It's not easy to speak up to someone who is self-destructing with alcohol - or any other substance.
Still, it's the right thing to do.
Don't ever turn your eyes from a difficult situation like this. We need to take care of each other.
We are, after all, in this life together. Thus, we all deserve respect, both in the giving and the getting.
May 13, 2013 ? A new study, led by a Binghamton University anthropologist and published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed new light on the earliest existence of humans. The study analyzed the tiny ear bones, the malleus, incus and stapes, from two species of early human ancestor in South Africa. The ear ossicles are the smallest bones in the human body and are among the rarest of human fossils recovered.
Unlike other bones of the skeleton, the ossicles are already fully formed and adult-sized at birth. This indicates that their size and shape is under very strong genetic control and, despite their small size, they hold a wealth of evolutionary information.
The study, led by Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, was carried out by an international team of researchers from institutions in the US, Italy and Spain. They analyzed several auditory ossicles representing the early hominin species Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus. The new study includes the oldest complete ossicular chain (i.e. all three ear bones) of a fossil hominin ever recovered. The bones date to around two million years ago and come from the well-known South African cave sites of Swartkrans and Sterkfontein, which have yielded abundant fossils of these early human ancestors.
The researchers report several significant findings from the study. The malleus is clearly human-like, and its size and shape can be easily distinguished from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Many aspects of the skull, teeth and skeleton in these early human ancestors remain quite primitive and ape-like, but the malleus is one of the very few features of these early hominins that is similar to our own species, Homo sapiens. Since both the early hominin species share this human-like malleus, the anatomical changes in this bone must have occurred very early in our evolutionary history. Says Quam, "Bipedalism (walking on two feet) and a reduction in the size of the canine teeth have long been held up as the "hallmark of humanity" since they seem to be present in the earliest human fossils recovered to date.
Our study suggests that the list may need to be updated to include changes in the malleus as well." More fossils from even earlier time periods are needed to corroborate this assertion, says Quam. In contrast to the malleus, the two other ear ossicles, the incus and stapes, appear more similar to chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The ossicles, then, show an interesting mixture of ape-like and human-like features.
The anatomical differences from humans found in the ossicles, along with other differences in the outer, middle and inner ear, are consistent with different hearing capacities in these early hominin taxa compared to modern humans. Although the current study does not demonstrate this conclusively, the team plans on studying the functional aspects of the ear in these early hominins relying on 3D virtual reconstructions based on high resolution CT scans. The team has already applied this approach previously to the 500,000 year-old human fossils from the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. The fossils from this site represent the ancestors of the Neandertals, but the results suggested their hearing pattern already resembled Homo sapiens. Extending this type of analysis to Australopithecus and Paranthropus should provide new insight into when our modern human pattern of hearing may have evolved.
Wow. Score one for the cast and crew of the new Star Trek movie! The picture above on the right looks like an outfit that would be worn at a gala on the Starship Enterprise. How ridiculous. Sheer with cut off sleeves? Now we’re losing our minds on this one. The worst part is that she was named the most beautiful woman in the world recently. I guess that title has nothing to do with style choices, because this is just plain silly. The outfit on the above right picture looks like the wrapping materials someone would use for a big Valentine’s Day gift. It looks like she got it snagged on the way through the door, then had her assistant cut a strip off the make it look better. She needs to hurry up and fire her stylist so she doesn’t end up losing her title. It’s that bad. Your thoughts? Pictures: PR Photos
If you ever thought real life should be more like the video games we play, you're not alone. At the very least, you definitely have an awesome friend in Caleb Kraft, senior editor at Hack a Day. He made a real homemade version of the fire breathing piranha plant from Super Mario Bros. It's incredible.
TO COMMEMORATE the 30th anniversary of their blockbuster "Sports" album, Huey Lewis and the News returned to Mill Valley's 2 A.M. Club the other day. Not to drink, necessarily, but to pose for an update of the photo of the band in their hometown bar that was on the cover of the album that shot them out of Marin County into Reagan-era, 1980s rock stardom.
"Sports" delivered a grand slam of Top 10 hits ? "The Heart of Rock & Roll," "I Want a New Drug," "Heart and Soul" and "If This Is It." A fifth single, "Walking on a Thin Line," even cracked the Top-20.
"We didn't know we were going to have four or five hits, we just wanted one," Huey told me, speaking by phone
from his Montana ranch. "We needed one, and it turned out we had five. Who knew?"
Huey and the News are celebrating this milestone with a new 30th anniversary issue of "Sports" with all nine original songs digitally remastered along with a second disc with live renditions of all the tunes, some never before released. It comes out on May 14.
After rehearsing in their new studio and office in San Rafael, Huey and the band are hitting the road on a "Sports 30th Anniversary Tour" of North America with more U.S. and international dates being added as we speak.
They've already been on "Dancing with the Stars," "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me," and they are scheduled to play on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on May 15. They're also booked to
appear on CBS "Sunday Morning" and "Good Morning America." The Wall Street Journal is working on a piece about them.
If you were around here in the '80s, you probably remember how cool it was that one of the biggest bands of the decade, their songs ubiquitous on the radio, were an entirely homegrown Marin product. Huey, sax player/arranger Johnny Colla, drummer Bill Gibson, keyboardist Sean Hopper, guitarist Chris Hayes and bassist Mario Cipollina were all Marin guys who came out of the local bands Soundhole and Clover and got together at a Monday night jam at Uncle Charlie's in Corte Madera.
Huey wasn't even the lead singer in Clover, but manager Bob Brown bought into him as a frontman the first time the handsome Huey, radiating charisma and good guy charm, walked into his office in Mill Valley.
"Bob is probably the third person on the planet who thought I could sing a song that could be commercial," Huey recalled. Brown, who now owns Rancho Nicasio, parted ways with Huey and the band last year. But through most of their career, Huey says, "He was a relentless advocate for Huey Lewis in the News, which was intrinsic to our success."
It was Brown, after all, who persuaded the band's label, Chrysalis, to let them make their records and videos on their home turf.
"The thing we're proudest of is that we did it ourselves in Marin County," Huey explained. "In 1982, there weren't any bands coming up that made records in their hometown. You didn't do that. You went to L.A. and did it that way. If Bob hadn't pushed so hard, it wouldn't have happened."
But it did. "Sports" was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito and Fantasy Records in Berkeley. The choice of the 2 A.M. Club for the cover shot was a natural because in Mill Valley, the bar is a landmark ("turn left at the 2 A.M. Club") and has an authenticity and lack of pretension that seemed to counter the "yuppie rock" label some critics were trying to pin on the band.
"The place kind of looked like us and where we're from," Huey said. "We're local characters anyway."
In today's digital music business, there are any number of ways for young musicians to make records and be heard. Huey, who'll be 63 in July, reminded me that in 1982 there was no Internet, no smartphones, hardly any personal computers, no jam band scene, no YouTube.
"The one avenue to success was Top-40 radio," he said. "What was going on in those days was that you tried to write, arrange and produce a hit record. Everything was driven by that. So we recorded 'Sports' with an ear toward radio."
The casual cover notwithstanding, "Sports" was meticulously, methodically produced to sound glossy and good over the airwaves.
"With the cover, it seems like it could be a pub record," Huey said. "It was really anything but. Each track was handled very specially. Everything was overdubbed piece by piece. Listening to it now, it sounds like a collection of singles. And that's what it was."
Huey and the News were also on the vanguard of rock videos as vehicles into mainstream pop culture. Like the albums, they were also locally made. The video for "Don't Ever Tell Me That You Love Me," for example, was shot in the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater on Mount Tamalpais.
"We dressed in our sharp clothes and went up to the amphitheater on the mountain and goofed around," Huey chuckled, crediting that video for helping them get a record deal.
It was that deal that led to the "Sports" album, rock stardom and now, 30 years later, a tour in which the band, boasting four of the original members, will be playing their breakout album from front to back.
"We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but the important thing is we can still play music for a living, and we've had a career," Huey said. "We have 25 people working for us. All these years later, we're still a cottage industry from Marin County."
Contact Paul Liberatore via email at liberatore@marinij.com; follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LibLarge. Follow his blog at http://blogs.marinij.com/ad_lib.
Some companies offer computer programs on the Internet and provide a free downloadable trial version. Some sites have tutorials that assist with learning how to operate the software. Tutorials for church accounting software usually include basic information about the program; how to begin using the program; menu bar options and help menus throughout each option. Some companies offer training classes for their software. All churches need a good system for record keeping. Church accounting software will assist in keeping good records. Information will be at one's fingertips when purchasing programs for the church accountant.
God's word tells us that it is very important that we be good stewards with his money and his business. Ministry is his business. Let us not be careless in taking care of God's ministry by lacking in the area of church accounting. There are many good reasons for accountants to use computer programs. The extensiveness of the church accounting software could very well depend on the unique needs of each ministry. However the basics would be very similar. One of the essential key areas to maintain would include financial records, including all incoming and outgoing money exchanges. Most of the money acquired through church functions is mainly through contributions. A good program will provide the ability to keep detailed contribution information. This will be much appreciated by the contributors. Most non-profit organizations that are set up legally must provide their contributors with a record for income tax purposes at the end of each year.
Ministry accountants should provide detailed records of all financial transactions concerning the Lord's money. Sometimes we get so busy with our ministry that we neglect the records that need to be kept. Someone within the administration should be responsible for making sure these church accounting records are kept daily. Something may be lost if it is put off. Details of a specific situation may not be remembered if we forget to record something immediately. Computer financial programs make this task easier. Let us be responsible with all of God's work. Let those who are of the household of faith set a standard. A standard that says, "God's work is the most important thing I can do, so I will be faithful in maintaining church accounting records as confirmation that I truly believe it is a worthy vocation to the Lord. "And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward" (Luke 16:2). "If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:11-13)
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Public release date: 15-May-2013
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