And with the conclusion of the last Battlefield Startup presentation, the second day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 has come to a close. The day kicked off with a talk between noted New York City venture capitalist Fred Wilson and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who recently become a VC himself. The two talked Bitcoins and traded VC stories with Wilson giving tips for pitching a venture capitalist. “Leave your backstory at home,” Wilson pleaded. Arrington quickly nodded and agreed. Mike Abbott then took the stage with Mailbox CEO and co-founder, Gentry Underwood. The two talked about the surprising pains in scaling Underwood’s hot iOS email application. It took engineers 24 hours a day for several weeks to keep up with the initial demand. And then Dropbox scooped up the company. Google’s Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google+, and Ardan Arac, Product Manager at Google, used the Disrupt stage to announce new Google + features. Simply put, Google +’s visibility is now supersized in Google Search. eBay chief John Donahoe explained to Bloomberg?s chief content editor Norm Pearlstine about how the company screens its acquisitions and how he keeps founders from leaving after the acquisition — a trick that many companies fail to execute after buying a startup. Troy Carter is disrupting the music industry from within. And today he spoke with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine about his secrets regarding managing Lady Gaga’s online presence (she doesn’t use Facebook personally), where celebrities go overboard online, and why he thinks terrestrial radio will be the home of the next big disruption. When should an entrepreneur raise money, who should they raise from? and, well, should they even raise? These were some of the questions discussed on a panel with TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis at Disrupt NY 2013, which included participation from Mike Abbott of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Aaref Hilaly of Sequoia Capital, AngelList?s Naval Ravikant, and Box Group?s David Tisch. At TechCrunch Disrupt NY today, VP of Display Advertising Products at Google, Neal Mohan, Facebook Ad Products Director Gokul Rajaram and Twitter Senior Director of Product Revenue Kevin Weil took the stage to talk about the state of digital advertising — and they each had a unique take on the subject. In a chat with TechCrunch’s Leena Rao, representatives from PayPal, Stripe and Gumroad gave thoughts on the currency that has VCs emptying their bank accounts to invest afresh —
Happiness: There's an app for thatPublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
Boston bombings unhappiest day in five years, new sensor shows
Pick up your smartphone. How are financial markets faring? Check Dow Jones or the S&P 500. Average temperature in the United State last July 4th? Steer your iPad over to the National Weather Service. OK, so how unhappy was the world after the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday, April 15?
Wait a minute. You can't measure global happiness, can you? Yep, now there's a website for that: http://www.hedonometer.org.
A team of scientists from the University of Vermont and The MITRE Corporation have been gaining international attention over the last few years for the creation of what they're calling a hedonometer. It's a happiness sensor.
Now findings from this research are updated every 24 hours (soon to be every hour, and, eventually, every minute)and are available to the public for free.
The day of the Boston Marathon was the saddest day measured by the scientists in nearly 5 years of observations.
The new website will go public on Tuesday, April 30, at 12:00pm.
On its front page, a wavering graph rises and falls like a ticker at the New York Stock Exchange. Except, instead of averaging the value of thousands of companies, the hedonometer compiles and averages the emotional state of tens of millions of people.
"What it's doing right now is measuring Twitter, checking the happiness of tweets in English," says Chris Danforth, a UVM mathematician who co-led the creation of the site with fellow mathematician Peter Dodds.
But soon the hedonometer will be drawing in other data streams, like Google Trends, the New York Times, blogs, CNN transcripts, and text captured by the link-shortening service Bitly. And it will be data-mining in twelve languages.
Hedonometer.org is based on the research of Dodds and Danforth and their team in the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont's Complex Systems Center, and the technology of Brian Tivnan, Matt McMahon and their team from MITRE, a not-for-profit organization that operates federal research and development centers and has expertise in big data analytics.
In February, the research team made headlines with the hedonometer. Studying geo-tagged tweets from cell phones, they reported on the happiest and saddest cities in America: Napa, CA, at the top and Beaumont, TX, at the bottom. In future versions of the new website, the researchers plan to make this kind of geographically linked data available, allowing as-it-happens observation of how a happiness signal varies, say, between Seattle and San Diego.
"Reporters, policymakers, academicsanyonecan come to the site," says Danforth, "and see population-level responses to major events."
Like the Boston Marathon bombings.
On Monday, April 15, reporters and TV crews from all over the world flocked to Boston to report on what they thought would be stories of athletic triumph. Instead, as the world now knows, two crude bombs near the finish line were detonated, killing three and injuring more than 260. Reporters turned to telling this new, tragic story. Many went out and started interviewing people. The stories were compelling; many people they spoke to around Boston seemed scared, angry, and sad.
But suppose reporters wanted to find out how the bombings were affecting the mood of the worldin real-time. Was this horror registering in the global psyche, and how deeply?
"Many of the articles written in response to the bombing have quoted individual tweets reflecting qualitative micro-stories," says Danforth. But capturing a few online comments or reactions on video does not necessarily reflect the overall mood of the English-speaking world anymore than talking to ten people in the park equals the US Census.
What if a reporter had also turned to the hedonometer? First, she'd have seen a dramatic downward spike in happiness for that day. Clearly, the Boston Marathon bombings were registering around the world. "Our instrument reflects a kind of quantitative macro-story," Danforth says, "one that journalists can use to bring big data into an article attempting to characterize the public response to the incident."
Thenin the same way that a stockbroker might drill down into a market average to get a sense of which companies are moving the markets the mosta reporter could dig deeper into the hedonometer's data. There, she could see that "explosion," "victims," and "kill" are at the top of a list of trending words pushing the hedonometer down to its lowest ever point on April 15.
"They rise to the top because they are words that are negative," Danforth says, "but primarily because they appear so much more than they usually do in the background in the ambient chatter of English."
The hedonometer draws on what scientists call the "psychological valence" of about 10,000 words. Paid volunteers, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, rated these words for their "emotional temperature," says Dodds, director of UVM's Complex Systems Center.
The volunteers ranked words they perceived as the happiest near the top of a 1-9 scale; sad words near the bottom. Averaging the volunteers' responses, each word received a score: "happy" itself ranked 8.30, "hahaha" 7.94, "cherry" 7.04, and the more-neutral "pancake" 6.96. Truly neutral words, "and" and "the" scored 5.22 and 4.98. At the bottom, "crash" 2.60, the emoticon ":(" 2.36, "war" 1.80, and "jail" 1.76.
Using these scores, the team collects some fifty million tweets from around the world each day"then we basically toss all the words into a huge bucket," says Doddsand calculate the bucket's average happiness score. As the site develops, the scientists anticipate that it will be gathering billions of words and sentences daily.
"Our method is only reasonable for large-scale texts, like what's available on the Web," Dodds says. "Any word or expression can be used in different ways. There's too much variability in individual expression," to use this approach to understand small groups or small samples. For example, "sick" may mean something radically different to a 14-year-old skateboarder than it does to his pediatrician.
But that's the beauty of big data. Each word is like an atom in the air when you're trying to figure out the temperature. It's the aggregate effect that registers, and no individual tweet or word makes much difference. In the Boston Marathon bombings example, positively scored words like "prayers" and "families" also spiked, but, obviously, not for positive reasons.
"If we remove 'prayers,' 'love,' and 'families,'" says Chris Danforth, "it's not going to change the day's overall deviation from the background, because of all the other words."
Changing which words are used to assess the overall emotional picture, "is like changing the filter on a lens you're using," explains Peter Dodds. "You can take out all the color, or you can turn up the contrast, but you can still see the picture."
In 1881, a little-known book, Mathematical Psychics, published by Francis Edgeworth, asked the reader to "imagine an ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical machine, continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual, exactly according to the verdict of consciousness."
In other words, a hedonometer. While Edgeworth's was a thought experiment, Dodds and Danforth's hedonometer is a real device. Of course, it doesn't directly measure "the height of pleasure." While the team is opening conversations with experts in brain scanning about how fMRI images might corroborate their remote-sensing approach, "we can'tand really don't want tolook inside people's heads," says Dodds.
Nor is their hedonometer "ideally perfect." They're working now to expand beyond the "atoms" of single words to explore the "molecules" of two-word expressions. But the hedonometer does work.
"The key piece is not whether we're correctly measuring atoms and molecules," says Brian Tivnan, a researcher from MITRE. "It's the relative context that is so important: which is why the sudden drop from the Boston Marathon bombings jumps out at you. The hedonometer shows the pulse of a society."
Of course, happiness isn't simple. Plato, Buddha, Freud and Tina Turner all pondered its meaning. Many Americans rank happiness as what they want most in life, but what is it, really?
"We're not trying to tell you that contentment is better than happinesswe're not trying to define the word," says Danforth. The Nasdaq Index doesn't capture the whole stock market. Gross Domestic Product doesn't define the meaning of the economy. An EKG doesn't tell a doctor everything about your heart. But all these aggregate measures, of something remote, are widely studied. The hedonometer may prove to be the same.
"We're just saying we're measuring something important and interesting," says Chris Danforth. "And, now, sharing it with the world."
###
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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.
Happiness: There's an app for thatPublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
Boston bombings unhappiest day in five years, new sensor shows
Pick up your smartphone. How are financial markets faring? Check Dow Jones or the S&P 500. Average temperature in the United State last July 4th? Steer your iPad over to the National Weather Service. OK, so how unhappy was the world after the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday, April 15?
Wait a minute. You can't measure global happiness, can you? Yep, now there's a website for that: http://www.hedonometer.org.
A team of scientists from the University of Vermont and The MITRE Corporation have been gaining international attention over the last few years for the creation of what they're calling a hedonometer. It's a happiness sensor.
Now findings from this research are updated every 24 hours (soon to be every hour, and, eventually, every minute)and are available to the public for free.
The day of the Boston Marathon was the saddest day measured by the scientists in nearly 5 years of observations.
The new website will go public on Tuesday, April 30, at 12:00pm.
On its front page, a wavering graph rises and falls like a ticker at the New York Stock Exchange. Except, instead of averaging the value of thousands of companies, the hedonometer compiles and averages the emotional state of tens of millions of people.
"What it's doing right now is measuring Twitter, checking the happiness of tweets in English," says Chris Danforth, a UVM mathematician who co-led the creation of the site with fellow mathematician Peter Dodds.
But soon the hedonometer will be drawing in other data streams, like Google Trends, the New York Times, blogs, CNN transcripts, and text captured by the link-shortening service Bitly. And it will be data-mining in twelve languages.
Hedonometer.org is based on the research of Dodds and Danforth and their team in the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont's Complex Systems Center, and the technology of Brian Tivnan, Matt McMahon and their team from MITRE, a not-for-profit organization that operates federal research and development centers and has expertise in big data analytics.
In February, the research team made headlines with the hedonometer. Studying geo-tagged tweets from cell phones, they reported on the happiest and saddest cities in America: Napa, CA, at the top and Beaumont, TX, at the bottom. In future versions of the new website, the researchers plan to make this kind of geographically linked data available, allowing as-it-happens observation of how a happiness signal varies, say, between Seattle and San Diego.
"Reporters, policymakers, academicsanyonecan come to the site," says Danforth, "and see population-level responses to major events."
Like the Boston Marathon bombings.
On Monday, April 15, reporters and TV crews from all over the world flocked to Boston to report on what they thought would be stories of athletic triumph. Instead, as the world now knows, two crude bombs near the finish line were detonated, killing three and injuring more than 260. Reporters turned to telling this new, tragic story. Many went out and started interviewing people. The stories were compelling; many people they spoke to around Boston seemed scared, angry, and sad.
But suppose reporters wanted to find out how the bombings were affecting the mood of the worldin real-time. Was this horror registering in the global psyche, and how deeply?
"Many of the articles written in response to the bombing have quoted individual tweets reflecting qualitative micro-stories," says Danforth. But capturing a few online comments or reactions on video does not necessarily reflect the overall mood of the English-speaking world anymore than talking to ten people in the park equals the US Census.
What if a reporter had also turned to the hedonometer? First, she'd have seen a dramatic downward spike in happiness for that day. Clearly, the Boston Marathon bombings were registering around the world. "Our instrument reflects a kind of quantitative macro-story," Danforth says, "one that journalists can use to bring big data into an article attempting to characterize the public response to the incident."
Thenin the same way that a stockbroker might drill down into a market average to get a sense of which companies are moving the markets the mosta reporter could dig deeper into the hedonometer's data. There, she could see that "explosion," "victims," and "kill" are at the top of a list of trending words pushing the hedonometer down to its lowest ever point on April 15.
"They rise to the top because they are words that are negative," Danforth says, "but primarily because they appear so much more than they usually do in the background in the ambient chatter of English."
The hedonometer draws on what scientists call the "psychological valence" of about 10,000 words. Paid volunteers, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, rated these words for their "emotional temperature," says Dodds, director of UVM's Complex Systems Center.
The volunteers ranked words they perceived as the happiest near the top of a 1-9 scale; sad words near the bottom. Averaging the volunteers' responses, each word received a score: "happy" itself ranked 8.30, "hahaha" 7.94, "cherry" 7.04, and the more-neutral "pancake" 6.96. Truly neutral words, "and" and "the" scored 5.22 and 4.98. At the bottom, "crash" 2.60, the emoticon ":(" 2.36, "war" 1.80, and "jail" 1.76.
Using these scores, the team collects some fifty million tweets from around the world each day"then we basically toss all the words into a huge bucket," says Doddsand calculate the bucket's average happiness score. As the site develops, the scientists anticipate that it will be gathering billions of words and sentences daily.
"Our method is only reasonable for large-scale texts, like what's available on the Web," Dodds says. "Any word or expression can be used in different ways. There's too much variability in individual expression," to use this approach to understand small groups or small samples. For example, "sick" may mean something radically different to a 14-year-old skateboarder than it does to his pediatrician.
But that's the beauty of big data. Each word is like an atom in the air when you're trying to figure out the temperature. It's the aggregate effect that registers, and no individual tweet or word makes much difference. In the Boston Marathon bombings example, positively scored words like "prayers" and "families" also spiked, but, obviously, not for positive reasons.
"If we remove 'prayers,' 'love,' and 'families,'" says Chris Danforth, "it's not going to change the day's overall deviation from the background, because of all the other words."
Changing which words are used to assess the overall emotional picture, "is like changing the filter on a lens you're using," explains Peter Dodds. "You can take out all the color, or you can turn up the contrast, but you can still see the picture."
In 1881, a little-known book, Mathematical Psychics, published by Francis Edgeworth, asked the reader to "imagine an ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical machine, continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual, exactly according to the verdict of consciousness."
In other words, a hedonometer. While Edgeworth's was a thought experiment, Dodds and Danforth's hedonometer is a real device. Of course, it doesn't directly measure "the height of pleasure." While the team is opening conversations with experts in brain scanning about how fMRI images might corroborate their remote-sensing approach, "we can'tand really don't want tolook inside people's heads," says Dodds.
Nor is their hedonometer "ideally perfect." They're working now to expand beyond the "atoms" of single words to explore the "molecules" of two-word expressions. But the hedonometer does work.
"The key piece is not whether we're correctly measuring atoms and molecules," says Brian Tivnan, a researcher from MITRE. "It's the relative context that is so important: which is why the sudden drop from the Boston Marathon bombings jumps out at you. The hedonometer shows the pulse of a society."
Of course, happiness isn't simple. Plato, Buddha, Freud and Tina Turner all pondered its meaning. Many Americans rank happiness as what they want most in life, but what is it, really?
"We're not trying to tell you that contentment is better than happinesswe're not trying to define the word," says Danforth. The Nasdaq Index doesn't capture the whole stock market. Gross Domestic Product doesn't define the meaning of the economy. An EKG doesn't tell a doctor everything about your heart. But all these aggregate measures, of something remote, are widely studied. The hedonometer may prove to be the same.
"We're just saying we're measuring something important and interesting," says Chris Danforth. "And, now, sharing it with the world."
###
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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.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? A public funeral will be held at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville for country music superstar George Jones, who died Friday at the age of 81.
Publicist Kirt Webster said in a statement that the public funeral will be held Thursday starting at 10 a.m. Webster says Jones would have wanted his fans everywhere to be able to pay their respects along with his family.
A private visitation for family, friends and fellow performers will take place Wednesday evening. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that contributions be made to the Grand Ole Opry trust fund or the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
LinkedIn is now rolling out a new feature very similar to a feature already offered by Facebook. When you begin typing out a person?s name or a company?s name in your status update, a drop-down menu will pop up that will allow you to ?mention? the person or company you?re discussing. The other party will be notified about your mention in real-time, providing much more engaging conversations.
LinkedIn states that its starting to roll out the new feature to English-speaking users at first, however, it plans on rolling out the feature to its global members soon. You can also utilize the new ?mentions? feature in the comments section on your LinkedIn pages as well. You will be able to hold much more organized conversations with individuals in a community, enabling convenient one-on-one conversations.
This new rollout works seamlessly with Twitter as well, despite the two companies severing ties with each other back in July of 2012. If your Twitter account is linked with your LinkedIn account, the mentions in your status updates will transfer over to Twitter seamlessly. The mentions, while appaering as a full name on your LinkedIn status update, will change itself to the mentioned person?s Twitter username.
LinkedIn provides professionals with an easy way to connect to other professionals in their fields, as well as search for new and better jobs. Speaking of jobs, LinkedIn also rolled out a revamp to its jobs page back in February that made it even easier for people to find jobs relevant to their interests and work experience. LinkedIn says that ?there?s more to come?, but we should expect no less from a network whose members ?are some of the most engaged professionals online.?
Some patients with incurable tumors and BRCA mutations respond to new 2-drug combinationPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Teresa Herbert teresa_herbert@dfci.harvard.edu 617-632-4090 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
WASHINGTONA novel combination of two drugs has shown anti-cancer activity in patients who had incurable solid tumors and carried a germline mutation in their BRCA genes, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers are reporting at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Washington, April 6-10.
The findings (abstract LB-202) will be released at a press conference on Sunday, April 7, 2 p.m. ET, and later at an oral presentation on Tuesday, April 9, 2 p.m. ET, in Room 153, in the Washington Convention Center.
The two oral drugs, sapacitabine and seliciclib, were given sequentially in a phase 1 clinical trial that is mainly enrolling patients whose tumors lack BRCA function because of an inherited mutation.
"We have seen several responses among these patients, as well as instances of prolonged stable disease lasting more than a year," said Geoffrey Shapiro, MD, PhD, director of Dana-Farber's Early Drug Development Center (EDDC). As a result, he said that a BRCA mutation may be a potential biomarker that identifies patients who are more likely to respond to the drug combination.
Sixteen patients enrolled in the trial carried an inherited BRCA mutation. Four of these patients had partial responses a 30 percent or greater shrinkage of tumor mass including one with pancreatic, two with breast, and one with ovarian cancer. Three patients were continuing to have a partial response at the time of presentation of the data, with the longest lasting more than 78 weeks. Two additional BRCA mutation carriers, with breast and ovarian cancer, experienced stable disease for 21 and 64 weeks, respectively. Of the remaining 22 patients enrolled in the trial, six experienced stable disease for 12 weeks or more.
Sapacitabine is toxic to cancer cells by causing damage to their DNA, which, if not repaired, causes the cells to self-destruct. The BRCA protein is essential for repair of the DNA damage caused by sapacitabine, so patients with mutations that inactivate BRCA may be more sensitive to the drug's activity.
The second drug, seliciclib, is an inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), enzymes that have multiple cellular functions, including a role in DNA repair, further augmenting the effects of sapacitabine. The patients in the trial received sapacitabine twice daily for seven days, followed by seliciclib twice daily for three days. Adverse events were mild to moderate in intensity, the study found.
Shapiro and colleagues are continuing to enroll BRCA mutation carriers in the trial, and hope to determine if the mutations may serve as a biomarker for response. He said that these drugs may prove to be an important treatment alternative for patients with BRCA-deficient cancers.
###
This research was supported in part by Cyclacel Ltd., and the National Institutes of Health (RO1 CA90687).
--Written by Richard Saltus, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It provides adult cancer care with Brigham and Women's Hospital as Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center and it provides pediatric care with Boston Children's Hospital as Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center. Dana-Farber is the top ranked cancer center in New England, according to U.S. News & World Report, and one of the largest recipients among independent hospitals of National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health grant funding. Follow Dana-Farber on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/danafarbercancerinstitute and on Twitter: @danafarber.
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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.
Some patients with incurable tumors and BRCA mutations respond to new 2-drug combinationPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Teresa Herbert teresa_herbert@dfci.harvard.edu 617-632-4090 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
WASHINGTONA novel combination of two drugs has shown anti-cancer activity in patients who had incurable solid tumors and carried a germline mutation in their BRCA genes, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers are reporting at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Washington, April 6-10.
The findings (abstract LB-202) will be released at a press conference on Sunday, April 7, 2 p.m. ET, and later at an oral presentation on Tuesday, April 9, 2 p.m. ET, in Room 153, in the Washington Convention Center.
The two oral drugs, sapacitabine and seliciclib, were given sequentially in a phase 1 clinical trial that is mainly enrolling patients whose tumors lack BRCA function because of an inherited mutation.
"We have seen several responses among these patients, as well as instances of prolonged stable disease lasting more than a year," said Geoffrey Shapiro, MD, PhD, director of Dana-Farber's Early Drug Development Center (EDDC). As a result, he said that a BRCA mutation may be a potential biomarker that identifies patients who are more likely to respond to the drug combination.
Sixteen patients enrolled in the trial carried an inherited BRCA mutation. Four of these patients had partial responses a 30 percent or greater shrinkage of tumor mass including one with pancreatic, two with breast, and one with ovarian cancer. Three patients were continuing to have a partial response at the time of presentation of the data, with the longest lasting more than 78 weeks. Two additional BRCA mutation carriers, with breast and ovarian cancer, experienced stable disease for 21 and 64 weeks, respectively. Of the remaining 22 patients enrolled in the trial, six experienced stable disease for 12 weeks or more.
Sapacitabine is toxic to cancer cells by causing damage to their DNA, which, if not repaired, causes the cells to self-destruct. The BRCA protein is essential for repair of the DNA damage caused by sapacitabine, so patients with mutations that inactivate BRCA may be more sensitive to the drug's activity.
The second drug, seliciclib, is an inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), enzymes that have multiple cellular functions, including a role in DNA repair, further augmenting the effects of sapacitabine. The patients in the trial received sapacitabine twice daily for seven days, followed by seliciclib twice daily for three days. Adverse events were mild to moderate in intensity, the study found.
Shapiro and colleagues are continuing to enroll BRCA mutation carriers in the trial, and hope to determine if the mutations may serve as a biomarker for response. He said that these drugs may prove to be an important treatment alternative for patients with BRCA-deficient cancers.
###
This research was supported in part by Cyclacel Ltd., and the National Institutes of Health (RO1 CA90687).
--Written by Richard Saltus, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It provides adult cancer care with Brigham and Women's Hospital as Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center and it provides pediatric care with Boston Children's Hospital as Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center. Dana-Farber is the top ranked cancer center in New England, according to U.S. News & World Report, and one of the largest recipients among independent hospitals of National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health grant funding. Follow Dana-Farber on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/danafarbercancerinstitute and on Twitter: @danafarber.
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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.
Fusion-io Unveils 1.6 TB ioFX for Workstation Applications High Capacity ioFX
Delivers Peak Performance for Professional Computer Graphics Applications including 4K Visual Effects Production, Stereoscopic 3D, Digital Intermediate, Computer Assisted Design and Video Editing
LAS VEGAS ? April 7, 2013 [National Association of Broadcasters 2013 trade show] ? Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) today announced that the ioFX workstation acceleration platform is now available with 1.6 TB of capacity, in addition to the original 420 GB form factor. The high capacity ioFX is ideal for video editing, computer assisted design (CAD), 4K and stereoscopic production, as well as digital intermediate (DI) finishing.
"Digital production is undergoing a resolution revolution as production moves to 4K and beyond, while production budgets and deadlines continue to tighten," said Vincent Brisebois, Fusion-io Director of Visual Computing. "To overcome these opposing forces, the Fusion ioFX can help digital artists efficiently deliver creative work faster, even when faced with the most demanding production requirements. Fusion-io is proud to collaborate with industry leading software developers and hardware companies to deliver breakthrough acceleration for the tools used by professional artists worldwide."
Based on the Fusion ioMemory platform trusted to accelerate data centers around the world, the 1.6 TB Fusion ioFX significantly improves workstation application performance. The Fusion ioFX removes traditional data storage bottlenecks to allow high performance CPUs and graphics processing units (GPUs) to operate at their full potential, enabling artists to composite, edit, playback and finish digital content with significantly greater speed and efficiency. The ioFX is also ideal for encoding, transcoding, particle simulations and working with large amounts of cached data.
Connecting via PCI Express, the ioFX is also available in a 420 GB capacity to provide artists with choice in selecting the ideal capacity for their applications. To help professionals maximize the capabilities of today's powerful applications for digital content creation, Fusion-io has worked closely with the industry's leading entertainment hardware and software providers to optimize the ioFX for visual effects production. "NVIDIA GPUs provide powerful performance to professional workstations, which is further boosted with the ioFX high speed memory platform," said Greg Estes, industry executive, media and entertainment, NVIDIA. "ioFX dramatically increases the amount of high-resolution content that can be sent to NVIDIA Quadro graphics boards for processing at extremely high speeds, enabling better artist interactivity and, ultimately, better client satisfaction for our customers."
"ASSIMILATE SCRATCH has earned its reputation for high performance by delivering 4K performance to DI and post facilities since 2007," said Steve Bannerman, VP of Marketing, ASSIMILATE. "The combination of SCRATCH and the 1.6 TB ioFX offers studio-grade performance to a far broader range of artists, even those reviewing dailies on set. Higher capacity acceleration is an ideal way to ensure maximum efficiency, either in post or on location, where meeting tight schedules is essential to staying within budget."
"From accelerating 3D painting in MARI, to reviewing shots in HIERO, to compositing in NUKE, Fusion ioFX adds powerful acceleration that can significantly enhance our applications," said Bruno Nicoletti, Head of Technology and Founder at The Foundry. "All of our software is designed to remove as many technical barriers from production as possible, and Fusion-io acceleration takes that one step further with the ioFX integrated into artist workstations. As the amount of data artists work with in today's high resolution formats continues to increase, the ioFX can help creatives spend more time manipulating their work with much more interactivity than before."
Fusion ioMemory software enables Fusion-io products to transparently deliver peak performance through an advanced operating system architecture that cuts through the latency introduced by hard drives and solid state disks. Fusion ioMemory products such as the ioFX also include Fusion ioSphere remote monitoring and management software, allowing IT teams to monitor and manage all Fusion-io solutions deployed throughout a studio from a single interface.
NAB 2013 attendees can see the ioFX in action at a number of leading Fusion-io software and hardware Technology Alliance Program member booths. A complete list of locations is available on the Fusion-io blog. The 1.6 TB Fusion ioFX will be available in summer 2013. List price will be disclosed when the product is released. The 420 GB ioFX is available now from Fusion-io and Value Added Resellers around the world for a list price of $1995 USD. To order or learn more about the ioFX, please visit www.fusionio.com/iofx.
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Fusion-io to Integrate ioFX Acceleration Into HP Z Workstations Industry Leaders Enhance Application Performance in Visual Effects, Digital Content Creation and Computer Assisted Design for Demanding Creative Projects
LAS VEGAS ? April 7, 2013 [National Association of Broadcasters Tradeshow] ? Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) today announced that it is collaborating with global workstation leader HP to integrate the Fusion ioFX into the award-winning HP Z820, Z620 and Z420 Workstations. The integrated solutions will offer ideal development platforms for professional artists in visual effects, upstream exploration of oil and gas, digital content creation (DCC) and computer-aided design (CAD).
In addition, professionals interested in adding the Fusion ioFX to their current HP Workstation can purchase the ioFX as a custom integration component. "I consider HP one of the best engineering companies in the world, so I'm thrilled to see HP and Fusion-io working together to advance workstation computing architectures," said Steve Wozniak, Fusion-io Chief Scientist. "The Fusion ioFX brings the intelligence of the Fusion-io approach to HP's incredible workstations, adding even more powerful application performance to the precision engineering HP is known for around the world." The Fusion ioFX provides unprecedented application acceleration to leading workstation applications such as those from Adobe, Assimilate, and The Foundry. The new solution will integrate the Fusion ioFX into the powerful HP Z Workstations with Intel Xeon processors.
The architecture is designed to deliver an industry-leading platform for digital content creation applications by moving beyond the performance limitations and bottlenecks of traditional systems. "HP is the workstation industry leader, and our customers demand to be the first to get cutting edge solutions that deliver performance, reliability and innovation," said Jeff Wood, vice president of product management, Commercial Solutions Business Unit, HP. "Providing the Fusion ioFX in our high-end HP Z Workstations will offer customers improved performance to tackle their most challenging projects faster."
Tuned for sustained performance in multithreaded applications, the ioFX enables artists to work on 2K, 4K and 5K content interactively, in full resolution, as well as to manipulate stereoscopic content in real time. With powerful throughput to maximize NVIDIA GPU processing, the ioFX will slash application wait times in HP WZ Workstations to accelerate both the hardware and software essential to professional digital content creation.
NAB Show attendees can also see the ioFX in action at a number of leading Fusion-io software and hardware Technology Alliance Program member booths. A complete list of locations is available on the Fusion-io blog.
Recent pipeline spills may have been caused by the combination of aging infrastructure and new types of oil
By David Biello
PIPELINE: Hundreds of leaks occur every year on pipelines in the U.S.Image: Flickr / Ray Bodden
An oil flood through an Arkansas subdivision on March 29 is just the most recent example of pipeline problems in the U.S. In recent weeks, months and years diesel has leaked from a pipeline into wetlands near Salt Lake City; oil has spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana; and about 20,000 barrels of oil have spewed into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The question: Is the problem the pipelines themselves or what they carry?
The answer may be an unfortunate combination of the two. Certainly, the infrastructure has issues. The U.S. is crisscrossed by more than four million kilometers of such pipelines, many decades old. These pipelines spring hundreds of leaks every year, most small. The pipelines can fail for reasons ranging from a backhoe inadvertently striking one to the slow but steady weakening from corrosion. "It's not a matter of if, but when," says Susan Connolly, a resident of Marshall, Mich., right near where the Kalamazoo River spill occurred in 2010 as a result of external corrosion.
Critics charge that pipelines carrying diluted bitumen, or "dilbit"?a heavy oil extracted from tar sands mined in northern Alberta?pose a special risk because, compared with more conventional crude, they must operate at higher temperatures, which have been linked to increased corrosion. These pipelines also have to flow at higher pressures that may contribute to rupture as well. Environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) notes that pipelines in the upper Midwest that routinely carry oil from tar sands have spilled 3.6 times more oil per pipeline mile than the U.S. average. The Arkansas and Kalamazoo accidents both involved dilbit.
The chemistry of the tar sands oil could contribute to corrosion as well. In processing, the tar sands are boiled to separate the bitumen from the surrounding sand and water, and then mixed with diluent?light hydrocarbons produced along with natural gas?to make the oil less viscous and able to flow. But even so, the resulting dilbit is among the lowest in hydrogen as well as the most viscous, sulfurous and acidic form of oil produced today.
Some think the Arkansas spill could have resulted from just this combination of aged infrastructure and added stress from dilbit, although an exact cause has yet to be determined. The breached Pegasus Pipeline involved in the Arkansas incident can carry nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day from Illinois to Texas. Originally constructed in the 1940s to bring Texas crude oil up to Illinois, it had been reversed in recent years to stream dilbit. The operator, ExxonMobil, retrofitted the 50-centimeter tube to compensate for the demands of pushing tar sand oil through in the opposite direction, but the higher temperatures and pressures may nonetheless have contributed to the rupture or sped up preexisting corrosion, suggest critics such as NRDC's Anthony Swift.
A study from the Alberta government (pdf), however, casts doubt on the notion that dilbit is worse for pipelines than any other oil is. It found that dilbit is not corrosive at pipeline temperatures of as much as 65 degrees Celsius, although it is highly corrosive at refinery temperatures above 100 degrees C. Nor is the fine sand that remains in some of the dilbit eroding pipelines, though it does form sludges that must be cleaned. The higher temperature operation may even kill off the bacteria that help to corrode pipelines carrying other types of oil. "There is no evidence that dilbit causes more failure than conventional oil," geologist John Zhou of the provincial government research firm Alberta Innovates said during an interview in November on a trip to the tar sands; Zhou helped prepare the Canadian province's analysis of dilbit. The U.S. National Academies is currently studying the issue.
The good news for residents of Arkansas is that a dilbit spill on land may prove easier to clean than one in water. Thanks to its more viscous nature, Zhou says, "it's not going to move very far on a spill"?as long as it does not get into waterways, as occurred in Michigan. Regardless, the sour smell of dilbit is likely to remain in the air of Mayflower, Ark., until all the diluent evaporates. "Before you get into town, you can already smell the oil," says Glen Hooks of the Sierra Club Arkansas, who visited the spill site. "There is no reason to trust oil companies when they say pipelines are safe when there's been spill after spill after spill."
The mishap also highlights some of the concerns around the building of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which could carry 830,000 barrels per day of dilbit or other tar sands products 2,700 kilometers from Alberta to Texas. That pipeline would incorporate the latest technologies, such as epoxy coatings and electrical current to reduce corrosion. Yet, even brand-new pipelines can spring a leak: TransCanada's Keystone I Pipeline, which began carrying dilbit from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest in 2010, has already suffered 14 different leaks (pdf).
BEIJING (AP) ? A middle-aged man who transported poultry for a living has died from a new strain of bird flu, the fourth death among 11 confirmed cases in China, the government and state media reported Thursday.
The 48-year-old man, who died in Shanghai, is one of several among the infected believed to have had direct contact with fowl, which may carry the virus. Until recently, the virus, known as H7N9, was not known to infect humans.
It is not known how people are becoming sick with the virus, and health officials and scientists caution that there are no indications it can be transmitted from one person to another. Scientists who have studied the virus's genetic sequence said this week that the virus may have mutated, spreading more easily to other animals and potentially posing a bigger threat to humans.
Guidelines issued Wednesday by the national health agency identify butchers, breeders and sellers of poultry, and those in the meat processing industry as at higher risk.
Experts only identified the first cases on Sunday. Some among the 11 confirmed cases fell ill several weeks ago but only now are being classified as having H7N9.
The government of Shanghai said that in addition to the man's death and two previously confirmed cases, there are three other suspected cases.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel pressed Hamas on Wednesday to rein in rocket-firing militants in the Gaza Strip after the most serious outbreak of cross-border hostilities since the ceasefire that ended an eight-day war in November.
The flare-up, sparked by anger in Gaza over Tuesday's death from cancer of a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, included the first Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run enclave since the truce.
By afternoon, the frontier had fallen quiet, an indication that Israel and Hamas were weighing their moves carefully after four months of relative calm that has enabled Gaza residents to rebuild and Israelis near the border to live without the familiar blaring of sirens warning of incoming rockets.
The Israeli military said two rockets fired from Gaza had struck southern Israel in a morning attack on Wednesday, causing no casualties, hours after its planes targeted "two extensive terror sites" in the north of the territory.
Israel launched the air strike after three rockets hit its south on Tuesday. An al Qaeda-linked group, Magles Shoura al-Mujahadeen, claimed responsibility for that attack and Wednesday's salvo, saying it was responding to the death of the 64-year-old prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdeya.
Tuesday was the third time since the November truce that rockets from Gaza had struck Israel.
But with a new government and defense minister now in place after weeks of coalition-building since a January election, Israel seemed keen to show resolve, putting the onus on Hamas to prevent any rocket fire.
"(Israel's armed forces) decided to attack overnight in order to signal to Hamas that we will not suffer any strike on the south. And any shooting will meet a response, in order to restore quiet for the south soon," Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, the chief military spokesman, said on Army Radio.
"I assess that Hamas has no interest in seeing the situation deteriorate," he said. "Our goal is to maintain the quiet."
SYRIA SPILLOVER
Spillover from the civil war in Syria - mortar and machinegun fire toward Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights - has also heightened Israeli concern.
"We will absolutely not allow any sporadic fire toward our citizens and our forces," Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement, referring to the situations on the frontiers with both Gaza and Syria.
Israeli tanks fired at a Syrian post on Tuesday after one such incident in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war. Israel's military said it was unclear whether rebels or forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were manning the position.
In Gaza, Hamas has at times cracked down on hardline Islamist Salafi groups, seeing them as a threat to the stability of the impoverished, Israeli-blockaded territory.
But Hamdeya's death touched a nerve among Palestinians, who regard their brethren in Israeli jails as heroes in the fight for statehood.
Palestinian officials accused Israel of failing to provide timely medical care for Hamdeya, who died in an Israeli hospital before a procedure for his early release on medical grounds was completed.
Israel denied negligence in treating Hamdeya, who was serving a life term over an attempt to blow up an Israeli cafe in Jerusalem in 2002 during a Palestinian uprising.
Commenting on the Gaza situation, Richard Serry, the U.N.'s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said it was of "paramount importance to refrain from violence".
He said in a statement that renewed violations of the ceasefire threatened to unravel Egyptian-brokered understandings that included an easing of Israel's restrictions on imports into the Gaza Strip.
Egypt mediated the truce after fighting in which some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. Israel launched its Gaza offensive with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its territory.
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement in 2007 after winning an election a year earlier.
Palestinians want to establish a state in the enclave along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 war.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Will Waterman)
Your modem and router lights are blinking all the time ? even when you know that no one is using the Internet. Is that a warning that something?s wrong?
Mostly, the lights on your modem or router indicate perfectly normal activity. Even when you aren?t actively browsing the web or downloading a video, your computer busily monitors all its network connections ? to your Internet Service Provider, to your Wi-Fi-connected phones, and to other connected devices, like your cable box, AppleTV, or Xbox. And all of this communication shows up as activity on your modem or router.
Real Threats
While most blinking lights are nothing to worry about, there are some real threats that you should know how to protect yourself from.
Botnets: Botnets are software programs that scan through the Internet looking for unsecured computers they can take over and turn into zombie spam machines. But no need to panic here; any computer that has even a basic firewall or is behind a router is perfectly safe.
Wi-Fi Thieves: Wi-Fi thieves are most likely your neighbors who don?t feel like paying for their own service. This isn?t a big threat, except that it may slow down your own connection ? plus, it isn?t really fair. If you suspect you have a Wi-Fi thief, log into your router and look at the list of devices connected. You should mostly see devices you recognize. If a neighbor is using your network, it?s likely their device will be simply labeled. These Wi-Fi thieves are generally thwarted pretty easily; just change the name of your router and your Wi-Fi password.
Viruses: if you have a virus on your computer, it could be sending traffic through your router too. Or worse, if someone has installed monitoring software, that could be sending out a log of all your Internet activity. To check, first run a virus scan and then try a network traffic monitor like Little Snitch for Mac or the Comodo Firewall for Windows machines.
For more on checking for and removing viruses, please see ?Does Your PC Have a Virus ? or Is it Just Slow?? and ?Computer Virus: How to Remove It.?
Steve Spohn ? an expert in gaming with disabilities and assistive technologies, and editor-in-chief of AbleGamers.com ? highlights a few technologies that make life easier, safer and more efficient for people with progressive muscle weakness. Some technologies currently exist; others are coming in the near future.
A resource list offers links to the technologies described in the article; links are provided to videos of some technologies in action.
by Steve Spohn on April 1, 2013 - 9:21am
Entering into the world of disability should come with a giant neon sign that reads ?Warning: Technology Ahead.? It?s inescapable. Not only is it all around us but for many of us, technology keeps us alive well beyond what the naysayers predict.
Different neuromuscular diseases progress at different rates, but eventually we all start losing mobility, strength and/or dexterity. Some of us will need canes, walkers, wheelchairs and even ventilators. Some will need technology that doesn?t yet exist.
Assistive technology allows increased freedom, improved quality of life and furthers independence. Yet, newer technologies are often expensive, leaving them out of reach for most on disability budgets.
Let?s examine which technologies will make your life better when you need it ? without breaking the bank.
The technology of today
iPads: For those with some hand strength and range of mobility, the iPad has an abundance of apps and mounts to adapt the device to your specific abilities. There?s simply too much information to list in this article, but let?s go over some quick examples.
The iPad can record lectures at school or college, saving you from taking notes. You can upload your books to an iPad if physically holding a book is difficult. You can mount it to your wheelchair for use on the go. The standard controls of a game can be more accessible on the large screen of an iPad with its simplistic, touch-based controls. Need to write a report, control your television, turn on your stereo or make a phone call? The iPad provides alternative means of doing all of those tasks and more.
Vocally Infinity 3: When you need a little bit more help physically, the best device you can purchase is one that gives you peace of mind. With the Vocally Infinity 3, you can dial any phone with just your voice. You?ll need a phone that you?re able to access, such as a switch-enabled phone, speakerphone or headset. To make a call, simply say the name of the person you want to dial and the device does the rest. (For another voice-activated speakerphone, see the Fortissimo featured in Product Peeks Spring 2013.)
PC technology: There are an infinite number of assistive technologies available to help you utilize a personal computer, ultimately making it your best friend. The voice recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 allows you to speak into a microphone and control your PC without ever lifting a finger. The software recognizes voice commands such as clicking on website links, opening programs and preset tasks. Voice recognition has come a long way in the last 10 years. Although the technology has been around since the 1990s, it was slow and often inaccurate. Users became frustrated when the software would become unresponsive or start pushing wrong buttons with disastrous results. Today, voice recognition has been integrated into everything from our cars to our phones, and Dragon itself now reaches up to 99 percent accuracy. If talking out loud isn?t your preference, consider an on-screen keyboard with dwell technology. A virtual representation of the keyboard is placed onto your screen and functions the same as a normal keyboard. You can click the buttons with the mouse or enable dwell, which pushes the button for you by leaving the pointer over a key for five seconds. Alternatively some keyboards can scan across the keys until the one you want is highlighted.
Environmental controls: Another crucial ability is operating the environment around you. There are many high-tech and expensive ways to accomplish that goal, but the most cost-effective is to purchase a device called a USB-UIRT, which allows you to broadcast infrared (IR) signals (just like your TV remote) from your personal computer. Combined with a program called Girder, the USB-UIRT can learn the IR codes of any remote controlled device. Point your TV, DVD, radio and other remotes to the USB-UIRT, program the codes and operate your entire environment from your PC. You?ll be able to use any assistive technology you already use, including eyegaze, to operate your environment. You also can purchase additional IR receiver modules to operate things that aren?t traditionally remote-controlled, like lights and fans. If you can push buttons on a standard universal remote control, Logitech Harmony offers the same ability as the USB-UIRT without requiring a PC.
Wheelchair driving: Perhaps the most vital component to regaining independence is driving your power wheelchair. Up until recently, once you lost the ability to control a joystick there was nothing that could be done. Now there are all kinds of interesting ways you can drive wheelchairs, but the most popular is the ASL mini-proportional joystick. The device uses a thimble-sized joystick that can be operated with a feather-light touch. If you only have millimeters of movement and little strength, you?ll be able to continue driving with this Medicare-covered device. Moreover, newer models come with a Bluetooth-enabled interface allowing you to operate the mouse on your computer from the same joystick.
Future technology
Technology doesn?t stand still for long. We?ll continue to see progressively more advanced technology helping the disabled community. Here are a few things you can look forward to:
24/7 computer assistance: The Ubiquitous Computer (Ubi), set to be released in April 2013, is a voice-activated computer assistant, similar to the ones on newer smartphones, which plugs into your wall and accesses the Internet via Wi-Fi. You?ll be able to control the lights, thermostat, TV, Internet and phone ? all with the sound of your voice. No button to press and the device is always listening. Ubi will be the ultimate in security and independence for people with limited mobility.
Cheaper gaze technology: Tobii, a world leader in eye-tracking technology, unveiled its latest product, Tobii REX, at this year?s Consumer Electronics Show. A small box attached underneath the center of your monitor keeps track of where you?re looking and moves the mouse pointer to that appropriate position in real time, giving those with very little movement further control over their computers.
Until now, the technology has been expensive, running thousands of dollars for quality hardware. But the company is calling Tobii REX the first eye-tracking device targeted at the mainstream, midprice consumer market. The consumer model will cost less than $1,000 when released later this fall; 5,000 limited-edition units are available for preorder.
Computer eyeglasses: Available within the next year, Google?s Project Glass is one of the hottest techie items to premiere in quite some time. An overlay that looks identical to your smartphone will be embedded in the glasses themselves. Imagine seeing the screen of an iPhone imprinted around the lenses of your glasses. For those with arm, hand and finger weakness, the ability to wear your smartphone and operate it by speaking instead of pushing small buttons on a hand-held device will be phenomenal. You?ll be able to take pictures, call friends, search the Internet, and more ? all by voice command.
The glasses will be specific to the device itself at first, but rumor has it that the technology will quickly evolve into something that can be put into your prescription eyeglasses.
Robot suits: And finally, science fiction has been promising us exoskeletons since the Golden Age of pulp fiction. But a company called Ekso is promising that day is coming sooner than you think. A ?wearable robot suit? that attaches to your legs and torso may ultimately be as common as wheelchairs.
The suit allows paraplegics to walk by sensing the electromagnetic signals the body puts out. It turns out that ? whether you?re talking about a neuromuscular disease or an injury from a traumatic event ? the body usually continues to send out signals from the brain to get our bodies to do what we want them to do.
Similarly, bioengineers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are hard at work on brain computer interface technology that would allow robotic arms to assist or replace nonfunctional limbs. Within the next decade we may have the resources to allow people with progressive muscle disorders, like myself, to bolster ourselves with technology and, as we lose abilities through the natural progress of the disease, to replace them with robotic technology. The future looks bright.
Steve Spohn is an expert in gaming with disabilities and assistive technologies, editor-in-chief of AbleGamers.com and outreach chair for the AbleGamers Foundation. The 32-year-old Pittsburgh native, who has spinal muscular atrophy, also is a Web designer, gamer and writer.
Anxiety about retirement -- for aging nuclear power plantsPublic release date: 3-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society
Mention "high costs," "financing" and "safety" in the same sentence as "commercial nuclear power plants," and most people think of the multi-billion-dollar construction or operational phase of these facilities, which provide 20 percent of the domestic electric supply. Those concerns, however, are now emerging as aging nuclear power plants reach retirement age, and electric utilities confront the task of deconstruction, or decommissioning, nuclear power stations. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
In the article, Jeff Johnson, C&EN senior correspondent, explains that a wave of nuclear power station retirements may be on the horizon. The average age of the 104 nukes in the United States, for instance, is 34 years only a few years short of and approaching their design life of 40 years. Almost 30 U.S. commercial and research reactors already have started decommissioning.
The article describes why decommissioning is a long, complex, costly process, with $400 million regarded as the bargain basement price tag for cleaning up a single reactor. It includes an informative sidebar, "Anatomy of a Decommissioning," describing why decommissioning is a big-ticket item, with special technologies and personnel needed for a safe retirement. Indeed, the coming wave of retirements likely will foster emergency of a new industry devoted to decommissioning.
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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
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Anxiety about retirement -- for aging nuclear power plantsPublic release date: 3-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society
Mention "high costs," "financing" and "safety" in the same sentence as "commercial nuclear power plants," and most people think of the multi-billion-dollar construction or operational phase of these facilities, which provide 20 percent of the domestic electric supply. Those concerns, however, are now emerging as aging nuclear power plants reach retirement age, and electric utilities confront the task of deconstruction, or decommissioning, nuclear power stations. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
In the article, Jeff Johnson, C&EN senior correspondent, explains that a wave of nuclear power station retirements may be on the horizon. The average age of the 104 nukes in the United States, for instance, is 34 years only a few years short of and approaching their design life of 40 years. Almost 30 U.S. commercial and research reactors already have started decommissioning.
The article describes why decommissioning is a long, complex, costly process, with $400 million regarded as the bargain basement price tag for cleaning up a single reactor. It includes an informative sidebar, "Anatomy of a Decommissioning," describing why decommissioning is a big-ticket item, with special technologies and personnel needed for a safe retirement. Indeed, the coming wave of retirements likely will foster emergency of a new industry devoted to decommissioning.
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Follow us:
Twitter Facebook
[ | 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.
And with the conclusion of the last Battlefield Startup presentation, the second day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 has come to a close. The day kicked off with a talk between noted New York City venture capitalist Fred Wilson and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who recently become a VC himself. The two talked Bitcoins and traded VC stories with Wilson giving tips for pitching a venture capitalist. “Leave your backstory at home,” Wilson pleaded. Arrington quickly nodded and agreed. Mike Abbott then took the stage with Mailbox CEO and co-founder, Gentry Underwood. The two talked about the surprising pains in scaling Underwood’s hot iOS email application. It took engineers 24 hours a day for several weeks to keep up with the initial demand. And then Dropbox scooped up the company. Google’s Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google+, and Ardan Arac, Product Manager at Google, used the Disrupt stage to announce new Google + features. Simply put, Google +’s visibility is now supersized in Google Search. eBay chief John Donahoe explained to Bloomberg?s chief content editor Norm Pearlstine about how the company screens its acquisitions and how he keeps founders from leaving after the acquisition — a trick that many companies fail to execute after buying a startup. Troy Carter is disrupting the music industry from within. And today he spoke with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine about his secrets regarding managing Lady Gaga’s online presence (she doesn’t use Facebook personally), where celebrities go overboard online, and why he thinks terrestrial radio will be the home of the next big disruption. When should an entrepreneur raise money, who should they raise from? and, well, should they even raise? These were some of the questions discussed on a panel with TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis at Disrupt NY 2013, which included participation from Mike Abbott of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Aaref Hilaly of Sequoia Capital, AngelList?s Naval Ravikant, and Box Group?s David Tisch. At TechCrunch Disrupt NY today, VP of Display Advertising Products at Google, Neal Mohan, Facebook Ad Products Director Gokul Rajaram and Twitter Senior Director of Product Revenue Kevin Weil took the stage to talk about the state of digital advertising — and they each had a unique take on the subject. In a chat with TechCrunch’s Leena Rao, representatives from PayPal, Stripe and Gumroad gave thoughts on the currency that has VCs emptying their bank accounts to invest afresh —
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Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
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