Microsoft Corp. took its fight to overturn a $290 million patent infringement judgment to the Supreme Court Monday, in a case that gearbox could re-calibrate the balance of power in information-age intellectual property disputes.
The immediate question before the high court was whether it's too hard to get an invalid patent thrown out. The broader question, raised by the Justices, is how the law should balance providing incentives for innovation, while ensuring that private parties can't lock up obvious or previously known developments.
Microsoft attorney Thomas Hungar told the Justices that lower courts were wrong to require that the software giant prove by "clear and convincing" evidence that a patent held by Toronto-based software company i4i LP is invalid. Normally, the standard of proof in civil lawsuits requires a preponderance of evidence – a less exacting standard.
The lower court held Microsoft to the "clear and convincing" evidence standard, and refused to invalidate i4i's claim to holding a patent for a certain feature of Microsoft's popular word processing program. Microsoft had argued damper the feature was based on already known technology, not a patentable invention.
If upheld by the Supreme Court, Mr. Hungar said, the decision "ensures the enforcement of invalid patents."
But Mr. Hungar's argument ran smack into a 1934 precedent from one of the court's most revered justices, Benjamin Cardozo, who in a case involving radio technology wrote that once issued, patents enjoy a presumed validity "not to be overthrown except by clear and cogent evidence."
"You're contradicting Cardozo?" said Justice Antonin Scalia, the court's senior member, who presided over the hearing because Chief Justice John Roberts, who owns Microsoft stock, recused himself.
Mr. Hungar said the Cardozo opinion concerned a narrower and different subset of patent challenges,
"But Justice Cardozo certainly didn't limit his holding in the way you led flexible strip suggest," retorted the court's newest member, Justice Elena Kagan. "The language of that opinion is extremely broad."
Justice Samuel Alito observed that when Congress revised the patent statute in 1952, it made no reference to the requiring challengers to reach the clear and convincing standard.
"The phrase, 'shall be presumed valid,' doesn't seem to me at all to suggest clear and convincing evidence," Justice Alito said. "Most presumptions can be disproved by much less."
Attorney Seth Waxman, representing i4i, said Congress was aware both of the 1934 Cardozo opinion and nearly 30 years of lower court precedent requiring clear and convincing evidence to invalidate a patent.
"Congress has actively acquiesced" in the clear and convincing standard, Mr. Waxman said.
Justice Stephen Breyer and several other justices groped for cable ties different methods that lower courts, the Patent Office, inventors and businesses could employ to ensure that only legitimate patents were enforced.
"It's a bad thing not to give protection to an invention that deserves it; and it is just as bad a thing to give protection to an invention that doesn't deserve it," said Justice Stephen Breyer. "Both can seriously harm the economy. What we're trying to do is we're trying to get a better tool, if possible, to separate the sheep from the goats."
Showing posts with label led bulbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label led bulbs. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
'shuttle successors'
With its shuttles about to retire, the agency has offered $270m (￡166m) of funds to four firms to help them mature designs for new orbiting vehicles.
Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp and SpaceX hope to sell bakugans astronaut "taxi" services to Nasa by mid-decade.
Until then, US crews will have go to the space station on Russian rockets.
"The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a US commercial provider," said Ed Mango, Nasa's Commercial Crew Programme manager.
"The partnerships Nasa is forming with industry will support the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit."
The winning companies have a range of concepts under developments.
SpaceX, which has garnered much publicity recently, is perhaps the most advanced in its plans. It has already flown a rocket called Falcon 9 and a capsule called Dragon. It is being offered $75m over the next year if it meets certain milestones in advancing Dragon's crew-carrying capabilities.
The long-established Boeing company stands to win the high pressure sodium lamp largest award depending on developments. It has a capsule design called CTS-100 which could transport up seven astronauts to the space station. The $92.3m Nasa support will help Boeing get the vehicle through to its preliminary design review.
Sierra Nevada Corporation has already received considerable financial support in Nasa's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) effort, and is in line to get a further ￡80m in the latest round of funding. It is developing a shuttle-like vehicle that would launch atop a rocket.
The fourth recipient, Blue Origin, is a company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin has kept much of its space development activity secret, but it has requested funds from Nasa to help it mature systems for a cone-shaped crew vehicle. It has been awarded up to ￡22m.
Perhaps just as interesting as the companies that have won awards are the companies that have missed out.
These included ATK which makes the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) that lift the space shuttle off the ground. ATK wants to marry an evolution of these SRBs with the main core stage of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket. The concept, known as Liberty, would be used to launch other companies' capsules and spaceplanes.
ATK will now have to secure funds elsewhere if it wants to exercise bike carry the Liberty idea forward.
Also missing out on CCDev money is United Launch Alliance (ULA). This is the company that operates Atlas and Delta rockets for the US Air Force and for Nasa.
These vehicles frequently orbit satellites, but ULA believes the rockets could be modified to launch humans also.
Sierra Nevada, Boeing and Blue Origin had all talked about using an Atlas 5 to loft their proposed crew ships.
Where Monday's announcement from Nasa leaves ULA's plans is uncertain. Again, it will need to use its own funds or find a partner if it wishes to continue with the project to man-rate the Atlas and Delta rockets.
Nasa is keen that the next era of vcm ids human spaceflight include a strong commercial element. It plans to substantially increase its seed funding in 2012.
The philosophy is not shared by many in the US Congress who would prefer Nasa to lead the development of a shuttle successor along traditional procurement lines.
Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp and SpaceX hope to sell bakugans astronaut "taxi" services to Nasa by mid-decade.
Until then, US crews will have go to the space station on Russian rockets.
"The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a US commercial provider," said Ed Mango, Nasa's Commercial Crew Programme manager.
"The partnerships Nasa is forming with industry will support the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit."
The winning companies have a range of concepts under developments.
SpaceX, which has garnered much publicity recently, is perhaps the most advanced in its plans. It has already flown a rocket called Falcon 9 and a capsule called Dragon. It is being offered $75m over the next year if it meets certain milestones in advancing Dragon's crew-carrying capabilities.
The long-established Boeing company stands to win the high pressure sodium lamp largest award depending on developments. It has a capsule design called CTS-100 which could transport up seven astronauts to the space station. The $92.3m Nasa support will help Boeing get the vehicle through to its preliminary design review.
Sierra Nevada Corporation has already received considerable financial support in Nasa's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) effort, and is in line to get a further ￡80m in the latest round of funding. It is developing a shuttle-like vehicle that would launch atop a rocket.
The fourth recipient, Blue Origin, is a company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin has kept much of its space development activity secret, but it has requested funds from Nasa to help it mature systems for a cone-shaped crew vehicle. It has been awarded up to ￡22m.
Perhaps just as interesting as the companies that have won awards are the companies that have missed out.
These included ATK which makes the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) that lift the space shuttle off the ground. ATK wants to marry an evolution of these SRBs with the main core stage of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket. The concept, known as Liberty, would be used to launch other companies' capsules and spaceplanes.
ATK will now have to secure funds elsewhere if it wants to exercise bike carry the Liberty idea forward.
Also missing out on CCDev money is United Launch Alliance (ULA). This is the company that operates Atlas and Delta rockets for the US Air Force and for Nasa.
These vehicles frequently orbit satellites, but ULA believes the rockets could be modified to launch humans also.
Sierra Nevada, Boeing and Blue Origin had all talked about using an Atlas 5 to loft their proposed crew ships.
Where Monday's announcement from Nasa leaves ULA's plans is uncertain. Again, it will need to use its own funds or find a partner if it wishes to continue with the project to man-rate the Atlas and Delta rockets.
Nasa is keen that the next era of vcm ids human spaceflight include a strong commercial element. It plans to substantially increase its seed funding in 2012.
The philosophy is not shared by many in the US Congress who would prefer Nasa to lead the development of a shuttle successor along traditional procurement lines.
Winklevoss Twins petition to void court ruling on Facebook settlement
On Monday, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed a OBD2 code scanner petition with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a court ruling from last week that said the two men can't get out of their 2008 settlement with Facebook.
For about $65 million in cash and stock, the Winklevosses settled a suit against Facebook that claimed co-founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the social networking website while working on a site for them called ConnectU when the three were students at Harvard.
The settlement is now worth more than $160 million because of Facebook's rocketing popularity and value.
The investment firm T. Rowe Price exercise bike recently bought $190.5 million in Facebook shares.?Facebook, now the Internet's most visited website,?is valued at about $50 billion.
A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals ruled?against the twins last week and now the two are looking to an 11-judge panel to consider their appeal.
The Winklevosses have argued in court documents that after the settlement was reached, they found out that their stock was worth less than were led to believe in the 2008 agreement.
The appeal was filed by the Winklevosses' lawyers at the law firm Howard Rice. Jerome B. Falk Jr., one of the twins' lawyers, said in a statement that the appeal is not for the courts to decide whether?the substantial settlement is worth being kept or not, but rather whether?the settlement was reached legally.
"Settlements should be based on honest dealing," Falk said. "Courts have wisely refused to high pressure sodium lamp enforce a settlement obtained by fraudulent means. The panel's decision shut the courthouse door to a solid claim that Facebook obtained this settlement by committing securities fraud. Our petition asks the full 9th Circuit to reopen that door."
Apple has sued Samsung for allegedly copying the iPad
Apple has sued Samsung for allegedly copying the iPad, iPod and iPhone with its Galaxy Tab and Galaxy handsets.
Samsung copied Apple technologies, designs and even packaging with its Google Android-based products, according to a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Apple is golf irons seeking a jury trial in the case.
"Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple's innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple's valuable intellectual property rights," Apple said in the complaint.
Late last year, Samsung became the first major consumer electronics maker to roll out a tablet to compete with the iPad. It is also one of the world's largest makers of mobile phones, especially handsets that use Android.
The complaint includes 10 charges of patent infringement, two of trademark violation and two of trade dress violations, plus unjust enrichment and unfair business practices. Apple named Samsung Electronics, Samsung America and Samsung Telecommunications America as defendants. The case was filed at the district court in San Francisco but is being transferred to Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler at the court's Oakland, California, location.
A spokesman for Samsung in the U.S. said the company had no cable ties comment on the lawsuit. Apple officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The allegations span a broad range of Samsung's mobile devices, including the Epic 4G, Captivate, Indulge, Nexus S and Galaxy S 4G smartphones as well as the Galaxy Tab. Apple singled out the Galaxy product line for criticism.
"The copying is so pervasive, that the Samsung Galaxy products appear to be actual Apple products -- with the same rectangular shape with rounded corners, silver edging, a flat surface face with substantial top and bottom black borders, gently curving edges on the back, and a display of colorful square icons with rounded corners," the complaint said.
Apple wants an injunction to stop Samsung's alleged intellectual property violations, along with led bulbs actual and punitive damages, Samsung's "wrongfully obtained profits" and funds for corrective advertising about the allegedly confusing products.
Samsung copied Apple technologies, designs and even packaging with its Google Android-based products, according to a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Apple is golf irons seeking a jury trial in the case.
"Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple's innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple's valuable intellectual property rights," Apple said in the complaint.
Late last year, Samsung became the first major consumer electronics maker to roll out a tablet to compete with the iPad. It is also one of the world's largest makers of mobile phones, especially handsets that use Android.
The complaint includes 10 charges of patent infringement, two of trademark violation and two of trade dress violations, plus unjust enrichment and unfair business practices. Apple named Samsung Electronics, Samsung America and Samsung Telecommunications America as defendants. The case was filed at the district court in San Francisco but is being transferred to Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler at the court's Oakland, California, location.
A spokesman for Samsung in the U.S. said the company had no cable ties comment on the lawsuit. Apple officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The allegations span a broad range of Samsung's mobile devices, including the Epic 4G, Captivate, Indulge, Nexus S and Galaxy S 4G smartphones as well as the Galaxy Tab. Apple singled out the Galaxy product line for criticism.
"The copying is so pervasive, that the Samsung Galaxy products appear to be actual Apple products -- with the same rectangular shape with rounded corners, silver edging, a flat surface face with substantial top and bottom black borders, gently curving edges on the back, and a display of colorful square icons with rounded corners," the complaint said.
Apple wants an injunction to stop Samsung's alleged intellectual property violations, along with led bulbs actual and punitive damages, Samsung's "wrongfully obtained profits" and funds for corrective advertising about the allegedly confusing products.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The world's oldest man in Montana died, at the age of 114
Walter Breuning's earliest memories stretched back 111 years, before home entertainment came with a twist of the radio dial. They were of his grandfather's tales hydraulic motor of killing Southerners in the Civil War.
Breuning was 3 and horrified: "I thought that was a hell of a thing to say."
But the stories stuck, becoming the first building blocks into what would develop into a deceptively simple philosophy that Breuning, the world's oldest man at 114 before he died Thursday, credited to his longevity.
Here's the world's oldest man's secret to a long life:
• Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. ("Every change is good.")
• Eat two meals a day ("That's all you need.")
• Work as long as you can ("That money's going to come in handy.")
• Help others ("The more you do for others, the better shape you're in.")
Then there's the hardest part. It's a lesson Breuning said he learned from his grandfather: Accept death.
"We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die," he said.
Breuning died of natural causes in a Great Falls hospital where he had been a patient for much of April with an damper undisclosed illness, said Stacia Kirby, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Senior Living retirement home where Breuning lived.
He was the oldest man in the world and the second-oldest person, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga. — born 26 days earlier — is the world's oldest person.
In an interview with The Associated Press at his home in the Rainbow Retirement Community in Great Falls last October, Breuning recounted the past century — and what its revelations and advances meant to him — with the wit and plain-spokenness that damper defined him. His life story is, in a way, a slice of the story of the country itself over more than a century.
At the beginning of the new century — that's the 20th century — Breuning moved with his family from Melrose, Minn., to De Smet, S.D., where his father had taken a job as an engineer.
That first decade of the 1900s was literally a dark age for his family. They had no electricity or running water. A bath for young Walter would require his mother to fetch water from the well outside and heat it on the coal-burning stove. When they wanted to get around, they had three options: train, horse and foot.
His parents split up and Breuning moved back to Minnesota in 1912. The following year, as Henry Ford was led downlight creating his first assembly line, the teenager got a low-level job with the Great Northern Railway in Melrose.
"I'm 16 years old, had to go to work on account of breakup of the family," he said.
That was the beginning of a 50-year career on the railroad. He was a clerk for most of that time, working seven days a week.
In 1918, his boss was promoted to a position in Great Falls and he asked Breuning to come along.
There wasn't a lot keeping Breuning in Minnesota. His mother had died the year before at age 46 and his father died in 1915 at age 50. The Montana job came with a nice raise — $90 a month for working seven days a week, "a lot of money at that time," he said.
Breuning, young and alone, was overwhelmed at first. Great Falls was a bustling town of 25,000 with hundreds of people coming and going every day on trains that arrived at all hours.
"You go down to the depot and there'd be 500 people out there all climbing into four trains going in four directions," he said.
World War I was still raging in Europe, and Breuning, who had just turned 20, signed up for military service but wasn't called up. He wanted to join an Army unit formed by Ralph Budd, who was the railroad's cable ties vice president at the time and who later would become its president.
He sent Budd an application, and the reply was disappointing. Budd said Breuning couldn't join the unit because he wanted the young man to get a college education. The war ended later that year.
"So I never got into the war. The war ended too quick for me," Breuning said.
The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1919 and the nation was riding a postwar wave into the Roaring `20s.
Walter Breuning bought his first car that year.
It was a secondhand Ford and cost just $150. Breuning remembered driving around town and spooking the horses that still crowded the dirt streets.
"We had more damn runaways back in those days," Breuning said. "Horses are just scared of cars."
The year may have started well, but it went downhill fast. Drought struck. The price of hay skyrocketed and farmers had to sell their cattle. It was the first wave of agricultural depressions that would hit Montana over the next two decades.
The railroad started laying off people. Breuning had some seniority, so rather than losing his job, he was transferred to Butte. It was there he met his future wife, Agnes.
Agnes Twokey worked for the railroad as a telegrapher. She and Breuning worked the same shift in the office, and they got along well. Their friendship turned into a two-year courtship, and then they got married and returned to Great Falls.
Things were looking up for Breuning, Montana and the nation. Great Falls gave Montana its first licensed radio station in 1922. The following year, Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons fought for the world heavyweight golf irons championship east of Great Falls in Shelby.
Breuning was optimistic. He and his wife bought property for $15 and planned to build a house.
Then it all went off the tracks. The Great Depression struck.
"Everybody got laid off in the `30s," Breuning said. "Nobody had any money at all. In 1933, they built the civic center over here. Sixty-five cents an hour, you know. That was the wage — big wage."
People began to arrive in Great Falls searching for work. He recalled transplants from North Dakota telling tales of desperate families pulling weeds from the ground and cooking them up for food.
Breuning's seniority paid off again — he held onto his job. But he and his wife never built their house. They sold the lot for $25, making a tidy $10 profit. It turned out to be the only time Breuning ever owned property — he was renter for the rest of his life.
Despite the hard times of the decade, he said what he considered the nation's greatest achievement came in 1935, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law as part of his New Deal.
"I think when Roosevelt created Social Security, he probably did the best thing for people," Breuning said. "You hear so much about throwing Social Security out. Don't look for it. Hang on to your hat. It'll never go away.
World War II lifted the nation out of its economic slump. Industry went into overdrive to support the war. With the men headed overseas to fight, the women took their places in factories.
Montana's Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was the sole vote against the U.S. entry into the war.
By that time, Breuning was in his 40s and too old to be drafted. So he kept working on the railroad.
The man who otherwise preached kindness and service to others acknowledged that he had mixed feelings about the war and the Nazis. He expressed some sympathy toward Hitler.
The war ended in 1945 when President Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The debate over whether Truman did the right thing was argued in the streets and cafes of Great Falls.
Breuning stuck up for Truman, saying there probably would have been a lot more people killed had Truman not made the decision to bomb the Japanese.
"I think he did pretty dang good," Breuning said. "But you know, all presidents done something good. Well, most of them. Except that last one."
Breuning, a self-described Republican, meant President George W. Bush.
"He got us into war. We can't get out of war now," he said. "I voted for him. But that's about all. His father was a high pressure sodium lamp pretty good president, not too bad. The kid had too much power. He got himself wrapped up and that's it."
The 1950s brought rock-and-roll, put the U.S. in the middle of the Korean War and kicked off the space race with the USSR's launch of Sputnik. The world was introduced to Elvis Presley, Fidel Castro and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
For Walter Breuning, the 1950s was marked by the death of his wife. Agnes died in 1957 after 35 years of marriage.The couple didn't have any children.
More than 50 years later, Breuning kept his feelings on his marriage and Agnes' death guarded.
"We got along very good," was about all he'd say. "She wouldn't like to spend money, I'll tell you that."
Breuning never remarried. "Thought about it. That's about it."
He did what he always did. He kept working.
Work was a constant in Breuning's life, what he did to get through the hard times and what he used to keep his mind active. One of the worst things a person can do is retire young, Breuning said.
"I remember we had a worker in the First National Bank one time retired early. He wanted to go fishing and hunting so bad. Two months (later) and he went back to the bank. He got his fishing and hunting all done and he wanted to go back to work," Breuning said.
"Don't retire until you're darn sure that you can't work anymore. Keep on working as long as you can work and you'll find that it's good for you," he added.
The same year the Beatles released their first album, Breuning decided it was time for him to retire from the railroad at age 67. It was 1963 and he had put in 50 years as a railroad worker.
But he stuck by his philosophy and kept working. He became the manager and secretary for the local chapter of the Shriners, a position he held until he was 99.
But he remained a fiercely loyal railroad man, so loyal that he only took an airplane once in his life, and that was to attend the funeral of a relative in Minneapolis.
His beloved railroad underwent many changes soon after he left.In 1970 it merged with other railroad companies to become the Burlington Northern Railroad.
His fellow clerks began to feel the effects of technology. In the 1970s, computers started changing industries and the need for manpower. At the railroad, men and women were laid off at depots and freight offices. Superintendents and clerks like Breuning were given their walking papers.
But even with so many of his former co-workers out of jobs, Breuning was adamant that the rise of the computer was good for the railroad industry and the world.
"I think every change that we've ever made, ever since I was a child — 100 years — every change has been good for the people," Breuning said. "My God, we used to have to write with pen and ink, you know, (for) everything. When the machines came, it just made life so much easier."
Breuning had lived in a sparse studio apartment in the Rainbow Senior Living retirement center since 1980.
When he was recognized as the world's oldest man and brought the retirement home some notoriety, he was offered a larger room. Breuning said no, Rainbow executive director Tina Bundtrock said in October.
Breuning would spent his days in an armchair outside the Bundtrock's office in a dark suit and tie, sitting near a framed Guinness certificate proclaiming him the world's oldest man.
He would eat breakfast and lunch and then retire to his room in the early afternoon. He'd visit the doctor just twice a year for checkups and the only medication he would take was aspirin, Bundtrock said.
His good health was due to his strict diet of two meals a day, Breuning said.
"How many people in this country say that they can't take the weight off?" he said. "I tell these people, I says, 'Get on a diet and stay on it. You'll find that you're in much better shape, feel good.'"
He had no family left but a niece and a nephew. They visited a couple of times at the retirement home, but they were strangers to him, he said.
Breuning's real family, his support group, was there in the Rainbow.
"Yeah, we're all one big family, I tell you that. We all talk to each other all the time. That's what keeps life going. You talk," he said.
Breuning talked current affairs with the other residents. One of his main causes was to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"War never cured anything. Look at the North and South right today. They're still fighting over the damn war. They'll never get over that," he said.
Along with debating others about the fate of the nation, Breuning also spent time a lot of time reflecting. Sitting in his armchair, he would reach back across the century and lose himself in a flood of memories that began with his grandfather's Civil War stories.
He also thought about what might have been. After 97 years in Montana, Breuning said he thought back to his transfer to Great Falls back in 1913.
What course would he have gone on, how different would that century have been for him if he had stayed in Minnesota?
"Sometimes I wonder what would have exercise bike happened had I not moved to Great Falls. I think about that once in a while. What would have happened?" Breuning said. "I had a good job back (in Minnesota). But life is good here too."
But he didn't regret anything, and he implored others to follow his philosophy.
"Everybody says your mind is the most important thing about your body. Your mind and your body. You keep both busy, and by God you'll be here a long time," he said.
Breuning was 3 and horrified: "I thought that was a hell of a thing to say."
But the stories stuck, becoming the first building blocks into what would develop into a deceptively simple philosophy that Breuning, the world's oldest man at 114 before he died Thursday, credited to his longevity.
Here's the world's oldest man's secret to a long life:
• Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. ("Every change is good.")
• Eat two meals a day ("That's all you need.")
• Work as long as you can ("That money's going to come in handy.")
• Help others ("The more you do for others, the better shape you're in.")
Then there's the hardest part. It's a lesson Breuning said he learned from his grandfather: Accept death.
"We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die," he said.
Breuning died of natural causes in a Great Falls hospital where he had been a patient for much of April with an damper undisclosed illness, said Stacia Kirby, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Senior Living retirement home where Breuning lived.
He was the oldest man in the world and the second-oldest person, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga. — born 26 days earlier — is the world's oldest person.
In an interview with The Associated Press at his home in the Rainbow Retirement Community in Great Falls last October, Breuning recounted the past century — and what its revelations and advances meant to him — with the wit and plain-spokenness that damper defined him. His life story is, in a way, a slice of the story of the country itself over more than a century.
At the beginning of the new century — that's the 20th century — Breuning moved with his family from Melrose, Minn., to De Smet, S.D., where his father had taken a job as an engineer.
That first decade of the 1900s was literally a dark age for his family. They had no electricity or running water. A bath for young Walter would require his mother to fetch water from the well outside and heat it on the coal-burning stove. When they wanted to get around, they had three options: train, horse and foot.
His parents split up and Breuning moved back to Minnesota in 1912. The following year, as Henry Ford was led downlight creating his first assembly line, the teenager got a low-level job with the Great Northern Railway in Melrose.
"I'm 16 years old, had to go to work on account of breakup of the family," he said.
That was the beginning of a 50-year career on the railroad. He was a clerk for most of that time, working seven days a week.
In 1918, his boss was promoted to a position in Great Falls and he asked Breuning to come along.
There wasn't a lot keeping Breuning in Minnesota. His mother had died the year before at age 46 and his father died in 1915 at age 50. The Montana job came with a nice raise — $90 a month for working seven days a week, "a lot of money at that time," he said.
Breuning, young and alone, was overwhelmed at first. Great Falls was a bustling town of 25,000 with hundreds of people coming and going every day on trains that arrived at all hours.
"You go down to the depot and there'd be 500 people out there all climbing into four trains going in four directions," he said.
World War I was still raging in Europe, and Breuning, who had just turned 20, signed up for military service but wasn't called up. He wanted to join an Army unit formed by Ralph Budd, who was the railroad's cable ties vice president at the time and who later would become its president.
He sent Budd an application, and the reply was disappointing. Budd said Breuning couldn't join the unit because he wanted the young man to get a college education. The war ended later that year.
"So I never got into the war. The war ended too quick for me," Breuning said.
The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1919 and the nation was riding a postwar wave into the Roaring `20s.
Walter Breuning bought his first car that year.
It was a secondhand Ford and cost just $150. Breuning remembered driving around town and spooking the horses that still crowded the dirt streets.
"We had more damn runaways back in those days," Breuning said. "Horses are just scared of cars."
The year may have started well, but it went downhill fast. Drought struck. The price of hay skyrocketed and farmers had to sell their cattle. It was the first wave of agricultural depressions that would hit Montana over the next two decades.
The railroad started laying off people. Breuning had some seniority, so rather than losing his job, he was transferred to Butte. It was there he met his future wife, Agnes.
Agnes Twokey worked for the railroad as a telegrapher. She and Breuning worked the same shift in the office, and they got along well. Their friendship turned into a two-year courtship, and then they got married and returned to Great Falls.
Things were looking up for Breuning, Montana and the nation. Great Falls gave Montana its first licensed radio station in 1922. The following year, Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons fought for the world heavyweight golf irons championship east of Great Falls in Shelby.
Breuning was optimistic. He and his wife bought property for $15 and planned to build a house.
Then it all went off the tracks. The Great Depression struck.
"Everybody got laid off in the `30s," Breuning said. "Nobody had any money at all. In 1933, they built the civic center over here. Sixty-five cents an hour, you know. That was the wage — big wage."
People began to arrive in Great Falls searching for work. He recalled transplants from North Dakota telling tales of desperate families pulling weeds from the ground and cooking them up for food.
Breuning's seniority paid off again — he held onto his job. But he and his wife never built their house. They sold the lot for $25, making a tidy $10 profit. It turned out to be the only time Breuning ever owned property — he was renter for the rest of his life.
Despite the hard times of the decade, he said what he considered the nation's greatest achievement came in 1935, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law as part of his New Deal.
"I think when Roosevelt created Social Security, he probably did the best thing for people," Breuning said. "You hear so much about throwing Social Security out. Don't look for it. Hang on to your hat. It'll never go away.
World War II lifted the nation out of its economic slump. Industry went into overdrive to support the war. With the men headed overseas to fight, the women took their places in factories.
Montana's Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was the sole vote against the U.S. entry into the war.
By that time, Breuning was in his 40s and too old to be drafted. So he kept working on the railroad.
The man who otherwise preached kindness and service to others acknowledged that he had mixed feelings about the war and the Nazis. He expressed some sympathy toward Hitler.
The war ended in 1945 when President Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The debate over whether Truman did the right thing was argued in the streets and cafes of Great Falls.
Breuning stuck up for Truman, saying there probably would have been a lot more people killed had Truman not made the decision to bomb the Japanese.
"I think he did pretty dang good," Breuning said. "But you know, all presidents done something good. Well, most of them. Except that last one."
Breuning, a self-described Republican, meant President George W. Bush.
"He got us into war. We can't get out of war now," he said. "I voted for him. But that's about all. His father was a high pressure sodium lamp pretty good president, not too bad. The kid had too much power. He got himself wrapped up and that's it."
The 1950s brought rock-and-roll, put the U.S. in the middle of the Korean War and kicked off the space race with the USSR's launch of Sputnik. The world was introduced to Elvis Presley, Fidel Castro and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
For Walter Breuning, the 1950s was marked by the death of his wife. Agnes died in 1957 after 35 years of marriage.The couple didn't have any children.
More than 50 years later, Breuning kept his feelings on his marriage and Agnes' death guarded.
"We got along very good," was about all he'd say. "She wouldn't like to spend money, I'll tell you that."
Breuning never remarried. "Thought about it. That's about it."
He did what he always did. He kept working.
Work was a constant in Breuning's life, what he did to get through the hard times and what he used to keep his mind active. One of the worst things a person can do is retire young, Breuning said.
"I remember we had a worker in the First National Bank one time retired early. He wanted to go fishing and hunting so bad. Two months (later) and he went back to the bank. He got his fishing and hunting all done and he wanted to go back to work," Breuning said.
"Don't retire until you're darn sure that you can't work anymore. Keep on working as long as you can work and you'll find that it's good for you," he added.
The same year the Beatles released their first album, Breuning decided it was time for him to retire from the railroad at age 67. It was 1963 and he had put in 50 years as a railroad worker.
But he stuck by his philosophy and kept working. He became the manager and secretary for the local chapter of the Shriners, a position he held until he was 99.
But he remained a fiercely loyal railroad man, so loyal that he only took an airplane once in his life, and that was to attend the funeral of a relative in Minneapolis.
His beloved railroad underwent many changes soon after he left.In 1970 it merged with other railroad companies to become the Burlington Northern Railroad.
His fellow clerks began to feel the effects of technology. In the 1970s, computers started changing industries and the need for manpower. At the railroad, men and women were laid off at depots and freight offices. Superintendents and clerks like Breuning were given their walking papers.
But even with so many of his former co-workers out of jobs, Breuning was adamant that the rise of the computer was good for the railroad industry and the world.
"I think every change that we've ever made, ever since I was a child — 100 years — every change has been good for the people," Breuning said. "My God, we used to have to write with pen and ink, you know, (for) everything. When the machines came, it just made life so much easier."
Breuning had lived in a sparse studio apartment in the Rainbow Senior Living retirement center since 1980.
When he was recognized as the world's oldest man and brought the retirement home some notoriety, he was offered a larger room. Breuning said no, Rainbow executive director Tina Bundtrock said in October.
Breuning would spent his days in an armchair outside the Bundtrock's office in a dark suit and tie, sitting near a framed Guinness certificate proclaiming him the world's oldest man.
He would eat breakfast and lunch and then retire to his room in the early afternoon. He'd visit the doctor just twice a year for checkups and the only medication he would take was aspirin, Bundtrock said.
His good health was due to his strict diet of two meals a day, Breuning said.
"How many people in this country say that they can't take the weight off?" he said. "I tell these people, I says, 'Get on a diet and stay on it. You'll find that you're in much better shape, feel good.'"
He had no family left but a niece and a nephew. They visited a couple of times at the retirement home, but they were strangers to him, he said.
Breuning's real family, his support group, was there in the Rainbow.
"Yeah, we're all one big family, I tell you that. We all talk to each other all the time. That's what keeps life going. You talk," he said.
Breuning talked current affairs with the other residents. One of his main causes was to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"War never cured anything. Look at the North and South right today. They're still fighting over the damn war. They'll never get over that," he said.
Along with debating others about the fate of the nation, Breuning also spent time a lot of time reflecting. Sitting in his armchair, he would reach back across the century and lose himself in a flood of memories that began with his grandfather's Civil War stories.
He also thought about what might have been. After 97 years in Montana, Breuning said he thought back to his transfer to Great Falls back in 1913.
What course would he have gone on, how different would that century have been for him if he had stayed in Minnesota?
"Sometimes I wonder what would have exercise bike happened had I not moved to Great Falls. I think about that once in a while. What would have happened?" Breuning said. "I had a good job back (in Minnesota). But life is good here too."
But he didn't regret anything, and he implored others to follow his philosophy.
"Everybody says your mind is the most important thing about your body. Your mind and your body. You keep both busy, and by God you'll be here a long time," he said.
China Home Sales Increase in First Quarter
China’s housing sales value rose 26 percent in the first quarter as homebuyers increased their purchases even as the government stepped up its measures to curb speculation. Property stocks exercise bike climbed to a five-month high.
The value of homes sold increased to 860.7 billion yuan ($132 billion) from a year earlier, the Statistics Bureau said today, driving overall property transactions 27 percent higher to 1.02 trillion yuan. The amount was released separately from home prices after the government in January changed the way it reports housing price data in 70 cities.
Premier Wen Jiabao said April 13 in a cabinet meeting that the country faces challenges including rising property prices in many cities even as real estate transactions shrink. About 40 Chinese cities last month said they will cap new home prices below annual economic and disposable per-capita income growth or keep them steady following the central government’s measures to rein in housing values.
“Home sales and investment, lagging indexes, remained strong, but the volume for new construction dropped,” said Bai Hongwei, a Beijing-based property analyst at China International Capital Corp., the country’s biggest investment bank. “It showed the government’s measures are working. If real estate investment drops sharply, it will immediately impact China’s economic growth a lot.”
China’s economy grew a more-than-estimated 9.7 percent in the first quarter and high pressure sodium lamp inflation accelerated in March to the fastest pace since 2008, the government said today.
Home sales value in March rose to 414 billion yuan, close to the total of the first two months this year of 447.1 billion yuan, based on calculations subtracting government data in the first two months from the first-quarter figures. A total of 158.5 million square meters (1.7 billion square feet) of homes were sold from January to March.
New home construction rose 20 percent in the first quarter to 310.2 million square meters, the statistics bureau said.
The effects of the government’s controls on the property market were evident in the first quarter, Sheng Laiyun, spokesman for the statistics bureau, said in Beijing today. The government is pushing for the golf irons development of more low-cost homes, which will have a “relatively big” impact on housing prices as supply increases, he said.
February new home prices increased in all but two of the 70 Chinese cities monitored by the government. The national statistics bureau is scheduled to report March’s home price data on April 18. Nationwide prices rose 0.6 percent in March, led by smaller cities, SouFun Holdings Ltd. (SFUN) said on April 1.
China’s investment in real estate rose 34 percent to 885 billion yuan in the first quarter, according to the government data today. The current tightening measures will remain in place for the led downlight remainder of 2011 and likely into 2012, Jones Lang LaSalle, a property consulting company, said this week.
The value of homes sold increased to 860.7 billion yuan ($132 billion) from a year earlier, the Statistics Bureau said today, driving overall property transactions 27 percent higher to 1.02 trillion yuan. The amount was released separately from home prices after the government in January changed the way it reports housing price data in 70 cities.
Premier Wen Jiabao said April 13 in a cabinet meeting that the country faces challenges including rising property prices in many cities even as real estate transactions shrink. About 40 Chinese cities last month said they will cap new home prices below annual economic and disposable per-capita income growth or keep them steady following the central government’s measures to rein in housing values.
“Home sales and investment, lagging indexes, remained strong, but the volume for new construction dropped,” said Bai Hongwei, a Beijing-based property analyst at China International Capital Corp., the country’s biggest investment bank. “It showed the government’s measures are working. If real estate investment drops sharply, it will immediately impact China’s economic growth a lot.”
China’s economy grew a more-than-estimated 9.7 percent in the first quarter and high pressure sodium lamp inflation accelerated in March to the fastest pace since 2008, the government said today.
Shares Rise
The measure tracking property stocks on the Shanghai Composite Index climbed 0.9 percent to the highest since Nov. 8 as of the 11:30 a.m. midday break. It’s also the biggest advance among five industry groups on the benchmark gauge today.Home sales value in March rose to 414 billion yuan, close to the total of the first two months this year of 447.1 billion yuan, based on calculations subtracting government data in the first two months from the first-quarter figures. A total of 158.5 million square meters (1.7 billion square feet) of homes were sold from January to March.
New home construction rose 20 percent in the first quarter to 310.2 million square meters, the statistics bureau said.
The effects of the government’s controls on the property market were evident in the first quarter, Sheng Laiyun, spokesman for the statistics bureau, said in Beijing today. The government is pushing for the golf irons development of more low-cost homes, which will have a “relatively big” impact on housing prices as supply increases, he said.
Clear Targets
The government has clear targets, is resolute and has forceful measures to control the market, he said at a briefing to discuss the nation’s first-quarter economic performance.February new home prices increased in all but two of the 70 Chinese cities monitored by the government. The national statistics bureau is scheduled to report March’s home price data on April 18. Nationwide prices rose 0.6 percent in March, led by smaller cities, SouFun Holdings Ltd. (SFUN) said on April 1.
China’s investment in real estate rose 34 percent to 885 billion yuan in the first quarter, according to the government data today. The current tightening measures will remain in place for the led downlight remainder of 2011 and likely into 2012, Jones Lang LaSalle, a property consulting company, said this week.
Sales of Video, Computer Games Drop 16% in March
March wasn't a good month for the gaming industry.
Sales of video and computer games dropped 16% last month to $735.4 million, according to NPD Group data, as reported by the.
Hardware sales, meanwhile, were up 12%, to $494.5 million, thanks in part to Nintendo's new 3DS handheld console.
But overall, when including accessories and other game-related gadgets, the gaming industry saw its total sales drop 4% from a year ago, to $1.53 billion.
But, the Times notes, the good news for the industry is that consumers may still be spending big on games, by instead putting their money into apps for mobile devices or buying downloadable games, and those numbers weren't included in NPD's most recent report.
Sales of video and computer games dropped 16% last month to $735.4 million, according to NPD Group data, as reported by the.
Hardware sales, meanwhile, were up 12%, to $494.5 million, thanks in part to Nintendo's new 3DS handheld console.
But overall, when including accessories and other game-related gadgets, the gaming industry saw its total sales drop 4% from a year ago, to $1.53 billion.
But, the Times notes, the good news for the industry is that consumers may still be spending big on games, by instead putting their money into apps for mobile devices or buying downloadable games, and those numbers weren't included in NPD's most recent report.
Dinosaurs May Have Hunted at Night
Some dinosaurs didn't go to sleep when the sun went down. Like many living animals, some paleo-beasts stayed awake or woke up to forage or begin the hunt for prey.
This discovery, which relied on evidence within fossilized remains of dinosaur eyes, challenges the conventional wisdom damper that early mammals were nocturnal, or active at night, because dinosaurs had already taken the day shift.
"When we look at living vertebrates today, living birds, lizards and mammals we see such a great diversity of when they're active during the day," said study researcher Lars Schmitz, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of California Davis.
Some animals today, like us, are active during the day, while others prefer nighttime. Still others are active periodically throughout a 24-hour cycle. So Schmitz said he and colleague geologist Ryosuke Motani asked: "Why isn’t it possible that dinosaurs are nocturnal as well?"
To find out, they looked into the preserved beasts' eyes. Specifically, they looked at the width of the eye socket, and the dimensions of the scleral ring, a ring of bone that surrounds the iris of the eye in birds, lizards and dinosaurs. (Humans and other mammals don't have this bone.)
Nocturnal animals need to let the maximum amount of light possible into their eyes, so they need a larger opening within the scleral ring. Daytime living species, meanwhile, have much more light with which to see. A smaller opening reduces the amount of energy these animals have to spend constricting their pupils to reduce the amount of light coming in, and it also allows them to see a clear and focused image at a large range of depth, according to Schmitz.
Other animals are active at dusk and dawn or at sporadic intervals throughout the day — nowadays this includes large herbivores, like the fallow deer, certain birds, the large hairy armadillo, the Amazon tree gearbox boa and even dogs. Their eyes need both acuity and a good sensitivity to light. As a result, they have an intermediate-size scleral ring — among those that have this bone — and an overall larger eye.
In the fossils, researchers examined the proportions of certain features of the eye to determine a species' habits. They looked at the size of the opening inside the scleral ring, where the pupil would be, as well as the eye socket to determine the diameter of the eye, and at the diameter of the external edge of the scleral ring to determine the length of the eye. They then compared this information with data from living species.
Day, night and in between
Among 33 species of dinosaurs living during the Mesozoic era, about 250 million to 65 million years ago, they found a spread of lifestyles that resembled those among modern animals, an indication that dinosaurs too spread out to occupy the available ecological niches.
As with modern flyers, like birds and bats, the majority of the flying dinosaurs — including three pterosaurs and all of the four avian dinosaurs (the ancestors of modern birds) studied — were awake during the day. However, five species of dinosaur fliers were either nocturnal or awake periodically, two of which may have had activity resembling certain nocturnal seabirds.
Most of the plant-eating dinosaurs were awake periodically. For herbivorous animals, like elephants and the herbivorous dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi, larger size means a need to spend more time foraging and eating. Large animals are also more prone to overheat, so they try to avoid being active during the heat of the day, shifting their activity into nighttime hours, according to Schmitz.
Predators, both dinosaur and modern, gain an advantage by hunting at night, and all of the dinosaur predators analyzed were either nocturnal or periodically active. The finding could help to set the stage for other dinosaur findings. For instance, fossil evidence has documented an attack by one of these night dwellers, Velociraptor mongoliensis, on the periodically awake Protoceratops. This attack probably happened in the OBD2 code scanner twilight or low-light conditions, the researchers write.
These results indicate that dinosaurs and early mammals did not split the day and night; in fact, it's not yet clear whether early mammals were nocturnal at all, and that idea needs to be evaluated, Schmitz said.
This discovery, which relied on evidence within fossilized remains of dinosaur eyes, challenges the conventional wisdom damper that early mammals were nocturnal, or active at night, because dinosaurs had already taken the day shift.
"When we look at living vertebrates today, living birds, lizards and mammals we see such a great diversity of when they're active during the day," said study researcher Lars Schmitz, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of California Davis.
Some animals today, like us, are active during the day, while others prefer nighttime. Still others are active periodically throughout a 24-hour cycle. So Schmitz said he and colleague geologist Ryosuke Motani asked: "Why isn’t it possible that dinosaurs are nocturnal as well?"
To find out, they looked into the preserved beasts' eyes. Specifically, they looked at the width of the eye socket, and the dimensions of the scleral ring, a ring of bone that surrounds the iris of the eye in birds, lizards and dinosaurs. (Humans and other mammals don't have this bone.)
Nocturnal animals need to let the maximum amount of light possible into their eyes, so they need a larger opening within the scleral ring. Daytime living species, meanwhile, have much more light with which to see. A smaller opening reduces the amount of energy these animals have to spend constricting their pupils to reduce the amount of light coming in, and it also allows them to see a clear and focused image at a large range of depth, according to Schmitz.
Other animals are active at dusk and dawn or at sporadic intervals throughout the day — nowadays this includes large herbivores, like the fallow deer, certain birds, the large hairy armadillo, the Amazon tree gearbox boa and even dogs. Their eyes need both acuity and a good sensitivity to light. As a result, they have an intermediate-size scleral ring — among those that have this bone — and an overall larger eye.
In the fossils, researchers examined the proportions of certain features of the eye to determine a species' habits. They looked at the size of the opening inside the scleral ring, where the pupil would be, as well as the eye socket to determine the diameter of the eye, and at the diameter of the external edge of the scleral ring to determine the length of the eye. They then compared this information with data from living species.
Day, night and in between
Among 33 species of dinosaurs living during the Mesozoic era, about 250 million to 65 million years ago, they found a spread of lifestyles that resembled those among modern animals, an indication that dinosaurs too spread out to occupy the available ecological niches.
As with modern flyers, like birds and bats, the majority of the flying dinosaurs — including three pterosaurs and all of the four avian dinosaurs (the ancestors of modern birds) studied — were awake during the day. However, five species of dinosaur fliers were either nocturnal or awake periodically, two of which may have had activity resembling certain nocturnal seabirds.
Most of the plant-eating dinosaurs were awake periodically. For herbivorous animals, like elephants and the herbivorous dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi, larger size means a need to spend more time foraging and eating. Large animals are also more prone to overheat, so they try to avoid being active during the heat of the day, shifting their activity into nighttime hours, according to Schmitz.
Predators, both dinosaur and modern, gain an advantage by hunting at night, and all of the dinosaur predators analyzed were either nocturnal or periodically active. The finding could help to set the stage for other dinosaur findings. For instance, fossil evidence has documented an attack by one of these night dwellers, Velociraptor mongoliensis, on the periodically awake Protoceratops. This attack probably happened in the OBD2 code scanner twilight or low-light conditions, the researchers write.
These results indicate that dinosaurs and early mammals did not split the day and night; in fact, it's not yet clear whether early mammals were nocturnal at all, and that idea needs to be evaluated, Schmitz said.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Game email inbox want to make zero of fun
Can making email into a game make you more productive, encourage you to develop better habits and make email more fun? That’s the idea behind Baydin’s The Email Game, which applies gearbox gameplay mechanics to the process of working through your inbox.
After authorizing the app with your Gmail or Google Apps account, you’re presented with the top email in your inbox and have 90 seconds to decide what to do with it: Archive, reply, label or “boomerang” (which archives the email, but will bring it back into your email automatically at an allotted time). Each positive action taken adds points to your score and moves you to the damper next email. Take more than the allotted 90 seconds, or “skip” the email without deciding to take action on it, and you’ll lose points.
If you decide to reply to a message, you’re given three minutes to compose your reply. Again, if you delay, you’ll lose points, although you can always click the “add time” button if you have to compose a particularly long email. Note: By default, The Email Game adds a link to itself in your email signature, which I found a bit annoying; you can remove it in the app’s settings page.
The Email Game isn’t the first app to try to turn email into a game; we’ve previously written about 0boxer, for example, which also awards points for completing email actions, although The Email Game is the first app I’ve seen that adds time limits to discourage procrastination. Unlike 0boxer and InboxScore, however, The Email Game doesn’t have any social features, so you can’t compete with friends using an led downlight online leaderboard, and it also doesn’t seem to be able to keep track of your scores between sessions; it’s probably not something that you’d want to use on an ongoing basis. However, it’s certainly a fun way to motivate yourself to power quickly through your inbox in order to achieve “inbox zero.”
The “gamification of work” is something that’s attracting the attention of a few companies recently. Rypple, for example, is using gaming mechanics to increase engagement with its employee feedback app. While it remains to be seen as to whether gaming mechanics really can improve worker engagement and productivity, as Jessica noted in a recent post, game enthusiasts do tend to display the kind of traits — being bottom-line oriented, tolerant of diversity, comfortable with constant change, happy to learn, and intensely interested in innovation — that should also be advantageous in the workplace.
The free version of The Email Game works only with Gmail and Google Apps accounts. An enterprise edition is available that works with Outlook/Exchange or IMAP accounts and cable ties costs a rather pricey $20/seat/month.
After authorizing the app with your Gmail or Google Apps account, you’re presented with the top email in your inbox and have 90 seconds to decide what to do with it: Archive, reply, label or “boomerang” (which archives the email, but will bring it back into your email automatically at an allotted time). Each positive action taken adds points to your score and moves you to the damper next email. Take more than the allotted 90 seconds, or “skip” the email without deciding to take action on it, and you’ll lose points.
If you decide to reply to a message, you’re given three minutes to compose your reply. Again, if you delay, you’ll lose points, although you can always click the “add time” button if you have to compose a particularly long email. Note: By default, The Email Game adds a link to itself in your email signature, which I found a bit annoying; you can remove it in the app’s settings page.
The Email Game isn’t the first app to try to turn email into a game; we’ve previously written about 0boxer, for example, which also awards points for completing email actions, although The Email Game is the first app I’ve seen that adds time limits to discourage procrastination. Unlike 0boxer and InboxScore, however, The Email Game doesn’t have any social features, so you can’t compete with friends using an led downlight online leaderboard, and it also doesn’t seem to be able to keep track of your scores between sessions; it’s probably not something that you’d want to use on an ongoing basis. However, it’s certainly a fun way to motivate yourself to power quickly through your inbox in order to achieve “inbox zero.”
The “gamification of work” is something that’s attracting the attention of a few companies recently. Rypple, for example, is using gaming mechanics to increase engagement with its employee feedback app. While it remains to be seen as to whether gaming mechanics really can improve worker engagement and productivity, as Jessica noted in a recent post, game enthusiasts do tend to display the kind of traits — being bottom-line oriented, tolerant of diversity, comfortable with constant change, happy to learn, and intensely interested in innovation — that should also be advantageous in the workplace.
The free version of The Email Game works only with Gmail and Google Apps accounts. An enterprise edition is available that works with Outlook/Exchange or IMAP accounts and cable ties costs a rather pricey $20/seat/month.
Rising fuel prices raise import and export prices
Import and export prices continued rising in March, according to the Department of Labor Statistics, the result of surging commodity and fuel prices as well as the backlash of a weakened American dollar.
“On a grand scale, two things are happening,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Tuesday. “One, commodity prices are going through the roof. Two, the rise in oil prices, when it’s gone from $80 dollars to $105 or $107 per barrel, translates led bulbs into about $160 billion more that goes into foreign pockets. That’s about 1 percent of our gross domestic product, which is a pretty big chunk of change.”
Growing fuel prices and nonfuel imports including animal feed and metals led the spike in import prices, which rose 2.7 percent in March. It’s the largest increase since a similar 2.7 percent rise in June 2009.
Import prices have been steadily increasing for the past 12 months, rising 9.7 percent.
Fuel prices jumped 9 percent in March, which represents the largest monthly rise since June 2009. Over the 12-month period ended March, fuel prices ballooned by 28.7 percent, largely the result of skyrocketing petroleum prices.
Hufbauer noted that a weaker American dollar contributed to the rise in oil prices.
“The dollar is down relative to the cable ties currencies for most countries,” he said. “So, what that means is that foreign suppliers generally tend to absorb a fair amount of dollar devaluation relative to their currency.”
Adolfo Laurenti, deputy economist at Chicago-based Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said a weakened dollar was a “curveball.”
“The dollar has continued to weaken,” Laurenti said Tuesday. “But, there might be reason to expect the dollar to gain some ground, especially against the euro.”
Exports prices rose by a slight 1.5 percent last month, led by international demand for cotton, corn and nonagricultural industrial supplies and materials. The March boost in prices represents the largest increase since a 1.5 percent increase in November. Over the past 12 months, export prices rose 9.5 percent, the largest increase since July 2008.
Poor weather in the major corn producing countries such golf irons as Russia and Australia increased international demand for U.S. corn, pushing export prices up by 9.2 percent in March. During the past 12 months, corn prices shot up by 77.7 percent, driving a yearlong increase in overall agricultural export prices.
“The emerging economies have been doing very well in the last years,” Hufbauer said. “Those economies have been growing quite fast, and in those economies fast growth translates into pretty big additional demand for food claims, which puts pressure on the demand side.”
Hufbauer noted that as emerging economies see growth, they tend to shift toward a meat-based diet, which requires more corn for animal feed.
Similarly, an influx of Chinese demand for cotton boosted the fiber’s export prices by 10.5 percent in March, further increasing export prices.
“Again, we’ve had pretty good weather,” Hufbauer said. “Egypt is a big cotton producer, and there is a lot of chaos right now. Chaos reduces shipments, which is one reason for an increased demand for U.S.-produced cotton.”
Despite international demand for U.S. products, domestic machinery manufacturing metal halide lamp export prices hardly moved, signaling tough world competition for heavy machinery.
“It’s just part of the business cycle coming out of recession. There are up months and down months,” said Jim Nelson, vice president of communications for the Illinois Association of Manufacturers.
“It’s a competitive environment that is a living breathing things, much like the economy. As global competition becomes more intense, the less influence any one country has over price. It’s a competitive atmosphere. Producing the exercise bike best products that will be long lasting is always the way the U.S. succeeds in the world market.”
“On a grand scale, two things are happening,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Tuesday. “One, commodity prices are going through the roof. Two, the rise in oil prices, when it’s gone from $80 dollars to $105 or $107 per barrel, translates led bulbs into about $160 billion more that goes into foreign pockets. That’s about 1 percent of our gross domestic product, which is a pretty big chunk of change.”
Growing fuel prices and nonfuel imports including animal feed and metals led the spike in import prices, which rose 2.7 percent in March. It’s the largest increase since a similar 2.7 percent rise in June 2009.
Import prices have been steadily increasing for the past 12 months, rising 9.7 percent.
Fuel prices jumped 9 percent in March, which represents the largest monthly rise since June 2009. Over the 12-month period ended March, fuel prices ballooned by 28.7 percent, largely the result of skyrocketing petroleum prices.
Hufbauer noted that a weaker American dollar contributed to the rise in oil prices.
“The dollar is down relative to the cable ties currencies for most countries,” he said. “So, what that means is that foreign suppliers generally tend to absorb a fair amount of dollar devaluation relative to their currency.”
Adolfo Laurenti, deputy economist at Chicago-based Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said a weakened dollar was a “curveball.”
“The dollar has continued to weaken,” Laurenti said Tuesday. “But, there might be reason to expect the dollar to gain some ground, especially against the euro.”
Exports prices rose by a slight 1.5 percent last month, led by international demand for cotton, corn and nonagricultural industrial supplies and materials. The March boost in prices represents the largest increase since a 1.5 percent increase in November. Over the past 12 months, export prices rose 9.5 percent, the largest increase since July 2008.
Poor weather in the major corn producing countries such golf irons as Russia and Australia increased international demand for U.S. corn, pushing export prices up by 9.2 percent in March. During the past 12 months, corn prices shot up by 77.7 percent, driving a yearlong increase in overall agricultural export prices.
“The emerging economies have been doing very well in the last years,” Hufbauer said. “Those economies have been growing quite fast, and in those economies fast growth translates into pretty big additional demand for food claims, which puts pressure on the demand side.”
Hufbauer noted that as emerging economies see growth, they tend to shift toward a meat-based diet, which requires more corn for animal feed.
Similarly, an influx of Chinese demand for cotton boosted the fiber’s export prices by 10.5 percent in March, further increasing export prices.
“Again, we’ve had pretty good weather,” Hufbauer said. “Egypt is a big cotton producer, and there is a lot of chaos right now. Chaos reduces shipments, which is one reason for an increased demand for U.S.-produced cotton.”
Despite international demand for U.S. products, domestic machinery manufacturing metal halide lamp export prices hardly moved, signaling tough world competition for heavy machinery.
“It’s just part of the business cycle coming out of recession. There are up months and down months,” said Jim Nelson, vice president of communications for the Illinois Association of Manufacturers.
“It’s a competitive environment that is a living breathing things, much like the economy. As global competition becomes more intense, the less influence any one country has over price. It’s a competitive atmosphere. Producing the exercise bike best products that will be long lasting is always the way the U.S. succeeds in the world market.”
Oil prices continue sharp fall
Oil prices suffered their biggest two-day loss in 11 months and stocks dropped today on concerns about the strength of global growth metal halide lamp and as Goldman Sachs warned crude was set for a pullback.
The price of crude traded in New York slid more than 3%, bringing losses since Friday to 5.8%. Goldman Sachs predicted Brent prices would fall back to $US105 in "coming months," down from $US120 today, and the International Energy Agency said high prices could be eroding demand.
World stocks, as measured by the MSCI's main world equity index, were down 1.3%, the index's biggest one-day decline in four weeks.
Worries over global growth were heightened after Japan's economic minister warned that damage caused by last month's earthquake and tsunami could be worse than initially thought for the world's third-largest economy.
Japan's decision to put the severity of radiation leakage at exercise bike its stricken Fukushima nuclear plant on a par with the worst nuclear disaster, at Chernobyl, also weighed on sentiment.
"The market is increasingly becoming concerned about the situation in Japan and that high oil prices and high commodity prices will eventually hurt economic growth," said Mark Bronzo, money manager at Security Global Investors in Irvington, New York.
US stocks ended lower after disappointing revenue figures from aluminum maker Alcoa Inc, the Dow component that marked the start of the quarterly earnings season with its release after the market close on Monday. Energy stocks led losses on the benchmark S&P 500.
The S&P energy index, the market's top performer in the first quarter, shed 3%.
"The leadership has been for the longest time in those sectors that are highly related to global growth and commodity prices. So once the commodity space starts rolling over, then equities are poised to follow," said Robert Van Batenburg Spark Plug, head of equity research at Louis Capital in New York.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 117.53 points, or 0.95%, to end at 12,263.58. The Standard Poor's 500 Index dropped 10.30 points, or 0.78%, to 1,314.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 26.72 points, or 0.96%, to 2,744.79.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares slipped 1.7%, with miners and energy firms among the heaviest losers. Emerging markets, which count several resource exporters in their ranks, fell 1.9%.
Brent crude oil fell $US3.06 to settle at $US120.92 a barrel. The May Brent contract expires on Thursday. US May crude fell $US3.67 to settle at $US106.25.
"Fear of demand destruction is killing this market. There is a feeling that the recent rally lifted oil prices to unsustainable levels," said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago.
Spot gold fell from yesterday's record high while silver sagged a day after hitting a 31-year high.
The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, fell about 2% in its sharpest one-day decline in a month as raw materials markets came under pressure from the sell-off in oil.
Safe-haven demand
Safe-haven demand boosted Treasury prices. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was up 23/32, with the yield at 3.498%.
Thirty-year bonds rose more than a point in price, last yielding 4.579%.
The yen and Swiss franc rose sharply as jittery investors sold riskier trades funded by borrowing in the two low-yielding currencies.
"Carry trades are owned heavily and looked overextended, especially the gearbox yen crosses. These are the ones looking shaky," said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical strategist at CitiFX in New York.
The yen firmed to a 1-1/2-week high versus the US dollar, though gains are likely to be curbed by the Bank of Japan's perceived determination to keep monetary policy loose to aid economic recovery.
The dollar fell 1.2% against the Swiss franc to 0.8957 francs. It earlier dropped to 0.89421, its lowest in more than three weeks.
The euro rose to a 15-month high against the dollar above $US1.45, boosted by reported buying from China and news that China, the world's second-largest economy, was willing to purchase more Spanish debt.
Dovish comments from key US Federal Reserve officials weighed on dollar sentiment.
Two of the Fed's most powerful officials, Janet Yellen and William Dudley, said the US central bank should damper stick to its super-easy monetary policy as inflation is not a threat and unemployment remains too high.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.3% at 74.835 after hitting 74.704, its lowest since December 2009.
The price of crude traded in New York slid more than 3%, bringing losses since Friday to 5.8%. Goldman Sachs predicted Brent prices would fall back to $US105 in "coming months," down from $US120 today, and the International Energy Agency said high prices could be eroding demand.
World stocks, as measured by the MSCI's main world equity index, were down 1.3%, the index's biggest one-day decline in four weeks.
Worries over global growth were heightened after Japan's economic minister warned that damage caused by last month's earthquake and tsunami could be worse than initially thought for the world's third-largest economy.
Japan's decision to put the severity of radiation leakage at exercise bike its stricken Fukushima nuclear plant on a par with the worst nuclear disaster, at Chernobyl, also weighed on sentiment.
"The market is increasingly becoming concerned about the situation in Japan and that high oil prices and high commodity prices will eventually hurt economic growth," said Mark Bronzo, money manager at Security Global Investors in Irvington, New York.
US stocks ended lower after disappointing revenue figures from aluminum maker Alcoa Inc, the Dow component that marked the start of the quarterly earnings season with its release after the market close on Monday. Energy stocks led losses on the benchmark S&P 500.
The S&P energy index, the market's top performer in the first quarter, shed 3%.
"The leadership has been for the longest time in those sectors that are highly related to global growth and commodity prices. So once the commodity space starts rolling over, then equities are poised to follow," said Robert Van Batenburg Spark Plug, head of equity research at Louis Capital in New York.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 117.53 points, or 0.95%, to end at 12,263.58. The Standard Poor's 500 Index dropped 10.30 points, or 0.78%, to 1,314.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 26.72 points, or 0.96%, to 2,744.79.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares slipped 1.7%, with miners and energy firms among the heaviest losers. Emerging markets, which count several resource exporters in their ranks, fell 1.9%.
Brent crude oil fell $US3.06 to settle at $US120.92 a barrel. The May Brent contract expires on Thursday. US May crude fell $US3.67 to settle at $US106.25.
"Fear of demand destruction is killing this market. There is a feeling that the recent rally lifted oil prices to unsustainable levels," said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago.
Spot gold fell from yesterday's record high while silver sagged a day after hitting a 31-year high.
The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, fell about 2% in its sharpest one-day decline in a month as raw materials markets came under pressure from the sell-off in oil.
Safe-haven demand
Safe-haven demand boosted Treasury prices. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was up 23/32, with the yield at 3.498%.
Thirty-year bonds rose more than a point in price, last yielding 4.579%.
The yen and Swiss franc rose sharply as jittery investors sold riskier trades funded by borrowing in the two low-yielding currencies.
"Carry trades are owned heavily and looked overextended, especially the gearbox yen crosses. These are the ones looking shaky," said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical strategist at CitiFX in New York.
The yen firmed to a 1-1/2-week high versus the US dollar, though gains are likely to be curbed by the Bank of Japan's perceived determination to keep monetary policy loose to aid economic recovery.
The dollar fell 1.2% against the Swiss franc to 0.8957 francs. It earlier dropped to 0.89421, its lowest in more than three weeks.
The euro rose to a 15-month high against the dollar above $US1.45, boosted by reported buying from China and news that China, the world's second-largest economy, was willing to purchase more Spanish debt.
Dovish comments from key US Federal Reserve officials weighed on dollar sentiment.
Two of the Fed's most powerful officials, Janet Yellen and William Dudley, said the US central bank should damper stick to its super-easy monetary policy as inflation is not a threat and unemployment remains too high.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.3% at 74.835 after hitting 74.704, its lowest since December 2009.
The citizenship test has been passed
Mitt Romney tonight pushed back against those in his party who are questioning President Obama's citizenship, suggesting his fellow Republicans should put their energy into more substantive issues.
"The citizenship test has been passed," Romney said tonight on CNBC's Kudlow Report. "I believe the president was damper born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office...but his citizenship isn't the reason why."
Several prominent Republicans — including Donald Trump and Sarah Palin — have once again tried to stoke controversy by questioning Obama's citizenship even though his birth in Hawaii has been confirmed by officials in the state.
Romney said he would welcome Trump into the Republican race, while sidestepping a question whether he views the business mogul as a chief rival.
"He's a new face and a new voice in the process," Romney said of Trump, who is leading in led tube some recent national polls. "My view is, come on in the water's fine. The more the merrier."
Romney, in his first interview since announcing yesterday that he was formally exploring a presidential bid, also was asked several times about his biggest vulnerability: the Massachusetts health care plan. Today is the fifth anniversary of the law, which was used as a template for President Obama's national plan — one that is despised by most Republicans.
Romney repeated his defense of the Massachusetts law, while arguing that Obama was usurping states rights by imposing a federal plan. He largely ignored a question over whether the individual mandate — which is the biggest sticking point for many Republicans — was his biggest mistake as governor.
"One thing I learned is this: you don't take ideas from a state and try and impose cable ties them on the whole nation," Romney said.
"I'm very happy that the Democrats are celebrating the fact that we put in place a health care proposal in Massachusetts, an experiment," he added, referring to cakes that Democrats made today to tweak Romney.
"But why didn't any one of them, or the president, ever call me...Not one Democrat called me and said, 'Of what you did in Massachusetts, what would you do again? What would you have done differently?'"
Romney reiterated that he would repeal President Obama's plan. He also said that he would then file legislation to ensure that people with preexisting conditions aren't refused access to coverage — which is one of the golf irons most popular aspects of Obama's plan.
"The citizenship test has been passed," Romney said tonight on CNBC's Kudlow Report. "I believe the president was damper born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office...but his citizenship isn't the reason why."
Several prominent Republicans — including Donald Trump and Sarah Palin — have once again tried to stoke controversy by questioning Obama's citizenship even though his birth in Hawaii has been confirmed by officials in the state.
Romney said he would welcome Trump into the Republican race, while sidestepping a question whether he views the business mogul as a chief rival.
"He's a new face and a new voice in the process," Romney said of Trump, who is leading in led tube some recent national polls. "My view is, come on in the water's fine. The more the merrier."
Romney, in his first interview since announcing yesterday that he was formally exploring a presidential bid, also was asked several times about his biggest vulnerability: the Massachusetts health care plan. Today is the fifth anniversary of the law, which was used as a template for President Obama's national plan — one that is despised by most Republicans.
Romney repeated his defense of the Massachusetts law, while arguing that Obama was usurping states rights by imposing a federal plan. He largely ignored a question over whether the individual mandate — which is the biggest sticking point for many Republicans — was his biggest mistake as governor.
"One thing I learned is this: you don't take ideas from a state and try and impose cable ties them on the whole nation," Romney said.
"I'm very happy that the Democrats are celebrating the fact that we put in place a health care proposal in Massachusetts, an experiment," he added, referring to cakes that Democrats made today to tweak Romney.
"But why didn't any one of them, or the president, ever call me...Not one Democrat called me and said, 'Of what you did in Massachusetts, what would you do again? What would you have done differently?'"
Romney reiterated that he would repeal President Obama's plan. He also said that he would then file legislation to ensure that people with preexisting conditions aren't refused access to coverage — which is one of the golf irons most popular aspects of Obama's plan.
Doctors hope to the injured patient get well soon
Cardinal Roger Mahony visited Bryan Stow Tuesday to pray for the 42-year-old, who remains in a medically induced coma nearly two weeks after he was attacked after a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, a hospital spokeswoman said.
"His condition remains critical and doctors are hoping Bryan's condition high pressure sodium lamp improves over the next 24 hours," said hospital spokeswoman Rosa Saca, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center
Relatives of the Giants fan launched a website in part to provide daily updates on his condition. Stow's sister, Bonnie Stow, told CNN that one priority of the neurosurgeons is keeping him sedated to prevent seizures and swelling in the brain.
In a recent web posting, she wrote: "The doctors want to limit visitors, noise and physical contact with Bryan. They're wanting to keep his brain calm and just...quiet...to see how that works.... That way the neurologists can get a better reading of brain activity. Fever down."
Bonnie Stow said her brother's seizures have subsided, and
over the next 24 to 48 hours doctors want to gradually reduce the sedation he is under and, hopefully, bring him out of the medically induced coma.
"We can't wait for Bryan to wake up so he can see for himself just how much people love him, whether they are family, friends or strangers."
Since the unprovoked attack after the March 31 game at Dodger Stadium, money has poured in from numerous donors and fundraising events to help pay for medical costs and provide support for his two young children. Bonnie Stow said the website exercise bike also identifies fundraising activity endorsed by Stow's family.
"We are trying to post only legitimate fundraisers that we can confirm because unfortunately there are those trying to take advantage of this tragic situation," said Bonnie in a posting.
At a dual fundraiser Monday at Dodger Stadium and ATT Park in San Francisco, where the Giants and Dodgers played Monday, more than $120,000 was raised, said American Medical Response spokesman Jason Sorrick. More than $200,000 has been raised for Stow, who works for AMR.
Meanwhile, investigators continued their search for the two suspected assailants, who fled after the beating in a light-colored, four-door car driven by a woman with a young boy inside, authorities said. Since the release of composite sketches, police have investigated more than 100 clues based on calls and tips, said Los Angeles Police Detective PJ Morris.
About 100 witnesses saw Stow attacked as he left the stadium parking lot, and Morris said some of them have provided useful information. Officials are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to arrests and autoclave convictions.
"Whether it's the reward money or a Good Samaritan who wants to help solve a horrific crime, there has been a tremendous outpouring of calls from people who might have useful information," Morris said.
Morris said detectives have compiled and presented photographic lineups of possible suspects to witnesses in the Los Angeles area but no one has identified Stow's attackers. Another team of detectives has been showing the photos to witnesses in the Bay Area.
"Every call and tip is helpful in some capacity, even hydraulic winch if it eliminates someone who may resemble the composite sketches," Morris said. "There is no forensic evidence in this case, therefore that person who comes forward is most likely how we're going to solve this thing."
"His condition remains critical and doctors are hoping Bryan's condition high pressure sodium lamp improves over the next 24 hours," said hospital spokeswoman Rosa Saca, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center
Relatives of the Giants fan launched a website in part to provide daily updates on his condition. Stow's sister, Bonnie Stow, told CNN that one priority of the neurosurgeons is keeping him sedated to prevent seizures and swelling in the brain.
In a recent web posting, she wrote: "The doctors want to limit visitors, noise and physical contact with Bryan. They're wanting to keep his brain calm and just...quiet...to see how that works.... That way the neurologists can get a better reading of brain activity. Fever down."
Bonnie Stow said her brother's seizures have subsided, and
over the next 24 to 48 hours doctors want to gradually reduce the sedation he is under and, hopefully, bring him out of the medically induced coma.
"We can't wait for Bryan to wake up so he can see for himself just how much people love him, whether they are family, friends or strangers."
Since the unprovoked attack after the March 31 game at Dodger Stadium, money has poured in from numerous donors and fundraising events to help pay for medical costs and provide support for his two young children. Bonnie Stow said the website exercise bike also identifies fundraising activity endorsed by Stow's family.
"We are trying to post only legitimate fundraisers that we can confirm because unfortunately there are those trying to take advantage of this tragic situation," said Bonnie in a posting.
At a dual fundraiser Monday at Dodger Stadium and ATT Park in San Francisco, where the Giants and Dodgers played Monday, more than $120,000 was raised, said American Medical Response spokesman Jason Sorrick. More than $200,000 has been raised for Stow, who works for AMR.
Meanwhile, investigators continued their search for the two suspected assailants, who fled after the beating in a light-colored, four-door car driven by a woman with a young boy inside, authorities said. Since the release of composite sketches, police have investigated more than 100 clues based on calls and tips, said Los Angeles Police Detective PJ Morris.
About 100 witnesses saw Stow attacked as he left the stadium parking lot, and Morris said some of them have provided useful information. Officials are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to arrests and autoclave convictions.
"Whether it's the reward money or a Good Samaritan who wants to help solve a horrific crime, there has been a tremendous outpouring of calls from people who might have useful information," Morris said.
Morris said detectives have compiled and presented photographic lineups of possible suspects to witnesses in the Los Angeles area but no one has identified Stow's attackers. Another team of detectives has been showing the photos to witnesses in the Bay Area.
"Every call and tip is helpful in some capacity, even hydraulic winch if it eliminates someone who may resemble the composite sketches," Morris said. "There is no forensic evidence in this case, therefore that person who comes forward is most likely how we're going to solve this thing."
Two more sets of human remains have been discovered near a remote New York beach, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the gearbox entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.
The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.
Two more sets of human remains have been discovered near a remote New York beach, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
The discoveries came as police expanded a search from Long Island's Suffolk County westward into the Jones Beach area of Nassau County, just over the border from New York City. The expanded search was prompted by Suffolk's discovery in the past two weeks of four sets of unidentified human remains.
The most recent remains, found several miles away from damper the escorts, included the body of an infant or child, the New York Post reports, leading police to consider that the bodies were victims of multiple killers.
Police say evidence suggests that whoever dumped the four bodies discovered in December is knowledgeable of police investigative tactics and familiar with the area of Long Island where the bodies were found, according to multiple press reports. Authorities are reportedly considering that a former cop may be behind the killings.
The bodies of four women -- all in their 20s and found wrapped in burlap bags -- who worked as Craigslist escorts were found in the same area in December, but a spokeswoman with the Suffolk County Police Department told FoxNews.com that police have not determined whether the bodies found in the last two weeks are linked to those women.
Police expanded their search for more possible victims into Nassau County on Monday. About 125 searchers, some with dogs and others on horseback, scoured Jones Beach State Park for more possible victims.
The New York Post and the New York Times, citing unnamed sources, have reported that the killer may be a former cop or someone familiar with law enforcement procedure.
The person believed to be the killer had reportedly made taunting phone calls to the teen sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy shortly after she disappeared in July 2009. The calls were difficult for police to investigate because they were all under led flexible strip three minutes and made from crowded places, like Madison Square Garden and Times Square.
An official with the Suffolk County Police Department would not confirm to FoxNews.com that authorities are eyeing an ex-cop in the investigation.
"We haven’t said if we think it’s someone in law enforcement," the official said.
Criminal profilers say serial killers are often social and would appear to have a normal life with family and friends as opposed to being a loner.
The disappearance of 24-year-old N.J. resident and Craigslist escort Shannan Gilbert led investigators to the Suffolk County beach spot late last year. The skeletal bodies of female prostitutes found in December and the five unidentified bodies found recently were discovered within a three-mile radius on the north side of Ocean Parkway.
None of the found victims, however, is Gilbert, whose case remains open.
Cell phone calls made by the women are also being tracked, and computer cable ties records of their communications and appointment records have also been viewed.
A Suffolk County investigator who declined to be identified because of the ongoing case told The Associated Press that detectives are taking a methodical approach to finding the suspect, poring over credit card records of the victims to track their movements and where they spent their money in the area, MyFoxNY.com reports.
"These kinds of investigations have to take slow steps; you don't want to jump to conclusions," Katherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., and author of "The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation," told MyFoxNY.
"They are looking at the evidence to determine what may be similar golf irons about the victims, but they also want to look at dissimilarities," she said.
The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the gearbox entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.
The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.
Two more sets of human remains have been discovered near a remote New York beach, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
The discoveries came as police expanded a search from Long Island's Suffolk County westward into the Jones Beach area of Nassau County, just over the border from New York City. The expanded search was prompted by Suffolk's discovery in the past two weeks of four sets of unidentified human remains.
The most recent remains, found several miles away from damper the escorts, included the body of an infant or child, the New York Post reports, leading police to consider that the bodies were victims of multiple killers.
Police say evidence suggests that whoever dumped the four bodies discovered in December is knowledgeable of police investigative tactics and familiar with the area of Long Island where the bodies were found, according to multiple press reports. Authorities are reportedly considering that a former cop may be behind the killings.
The bodies of four women -- all in their 20s and found wrapped in burlap bags -- who worked as Craigslist escorts were found in the same area in December, but a spokeswoman with the Suffolk County Police Department told FoxNews.com that police have not determined whether the bodies found in the last two weeks are linked to those women.
Police expanded their search for more possible victims into Nassau County on Monday. About 125 searchers, some with dogs and others on horseback, scoured Jones Beach State Park for more possible victims.
The New York Post and the New York Times, citing unnamed sources, have reported that the killer may be a former cop or someone familiar with law enforcement procedure.
The person believed to be the killer had reportedly made taunting phone calls to the teen sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy shortly after she disappeared in July 2009. The calls were difficult for police to investigate because they were all under led flexible strip three minutes and made from crowded places, like Madison Square Garden and Times Square.
An official with the Suffolk County Police Department would not confirm to FoxNews.com that authorities are eyeing an ex-cop in the investigation.
"We haven’t said if we think it’s someone in law enforcement," the official said.
Criminal profilers say serial killers are often social and would appear to have a normal life with family and friends as opposed to being a loner.
The disappearance of 24-year-old N.J. resident and Craigslist escort Shannan Gilbert led investigators to the Suffolk County beach spot late last year. The skeletal bodies of female prostitutes found in December and the five unidentified bodies found recently were discovered within a three-mile radius on the north side of Ocean Parkway.
None of the found victims, however, is Gilbert, whose case remains open.
Cell phone calls made by the women are also being tracked, and computer cable ties records of their communications and appointment records have also been viewed.
A Suffolk County investigator who declined to be identified because of the ongoing case told The Associated Press that detectives are taking a methodical approach to finding the suspect, poring over credit card records of the victims to track their movements and where they spent their money in the area, MyFoxNY.com reports.
"These kinds of investigations have to take slow steps; you don't want to jump to conclusions," Katherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., and author of "The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation," told MyFoxNY.
"They are looking at the evidence to determine what may be similar golf irons about the victims, but they also want to look at dissimilarities," she said.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Cleaning Japanese radioactive water may need for decades
For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown.
Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with hydraulic orbital motor the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant.
The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.
No one is sure how to get rid of it safely.
"There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before," says Robert Alvarez, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department.
Japanese officials estimate that they already have accumulated about 15 million gallons of highly radioactive water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are being added every day as the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to feed coolant damper into the leaky structures.
Ultimately, the high-level radioactive substances in the water will have to be safely stored, processed and solidified, a job that experts say will almost certainly have to be handled on a specially designed industrial complex. The process of cleaning up the water could take many years, even decades, to complete. The cost could run into the tens of billions of dollars.
Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and longtime advisor on nuclear waste, said the problems facing Japan are greater than even the most highly contaminated nuclear weapons site in the U.S., the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
The Department of Energy is decommissioning eight reactors at Hanford and plans to process about 58 million gallons of radioactive sludge now in leaky underground tanks, all at an estimated cost of $100 billion to $130 billion, according to outside estimates. But unlike Fukushima Daiichi, none of the Hanford reactors melted down and virtually all of the site is accessible to workers without risking exposure to dangerous levels of radioactivity.
"It will be a big job, bigger than Hanford," Gilinsky said, though he cautioned that U.S. costs are unnecessarily high and that the Japanese may be able to do the work more economically.
The immediate problem facing the Japanese is how to store all that water until the led flexible strip reactors and the spent fuel pools are brought under control. The plant's main storage tanks are nearly full. To make room, Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco, released a couple of million gallons of the least contaminated water into the ocean this week, with the expectation that its radioactive elements would be diluted in the ocean's mass.
But international law forbids Japan from dumping contaminated water into the ocean if there are viable technical solutions available down the road.
So Tepco is considering bringing in barges and tanks, including a "megafloat" that can hold about 2.5 million gallons. Japan has also reportedly asked Russia to send a floating radiation treatment plant called the Suzuran that was used to decommission Russian nuclear submarines in the Pacific port of Vladivostok. The Suzuran was built in Japan a decade ago.
Yet even using barges and tanks to temporarily handle the water creates a future problem of how to dispose of the contaminated vessels.
U.S. and Japanese experts say the key to solving the disposal cable ties problem involves reducing the volume of water by concentrating the radioactive elements so they can be solidified into a safer, dry form. But waste experts disagree on exactly how to do that.
The difficulty of concentrating and then solidifying the contaminants depends on how much radioactivity is in the water, the type of isotopes and whether the work can be done on the Fukushima site.
UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Edward Morse said the water needs to be diverted into a concrete-lined holding pond fairly soon, where natural evaporation can help reduce its volume.
Youichi Enokida, a specialist in nuclear chemical engineering at Nagoya University in Japan, agrees that the material should be put into some type of storage that would concentrate it through evaporation, though Japanese experts generally talk golf irons about the need for a sealed pool.
Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with hydraulic orbital motor the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant.
The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.
No one is sure how to get rid of it safely.
"There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before," says Robert Alvarez, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department.
Japanese officials estimate that they already have accumulated about 15 million gallons of highly radioactive water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are being added every day as the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to feed coolant damper into the leaky structures.
Ultimately, the high-level radioactive substances in the water will have to be safely stored, processed and solidified, a job that experts say will almost certainly have to be handled on a specially designed industrial complex. The process of cleaning up the water could take many years, even decades, to complete. The cost could run into the tens of billions of dollars.
Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and longtime advisor on nuclear waste, said the problems facing Japan are greater than even the most highly contaminated nuclear weapons site in the U.S., the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
The Department of Energy is decommissioning eight reactors at Hanford and plans to process about 58 million gallons of radioactive sludge now in leaky underground tanks, all at an estimated cost of $100 billion to $130 billion, according to outside estimates. But unlike Fukushima Daiichi, none of the Hanford reactors melted down and virtually all of the site is accessible to workers without risking exposure to dangerous levels of radioactivity.
"It will be a big job, bigger than Hanford," Gilinsky said, though he cautioned that U.S. costs are unnecessarily high and that the Japanese may be able to do the work more economically.
The immediate problem facing the Japanese is how to store all that water until the led flexible strip reactors and the spent fuel pools are brought under control. The plant's main storage tanks are nearly full. To make room, Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco, released a couple of million gallons of the least contaminated water into the ocean this week, with the expectation that its radioactive elements would be diluted in the ocean's mass.
But international law forbids Japan from dumping contaminated water into the ocean if there are viable technical solutions available down the road.
So Tepco is considering bringing in barges and tanks, including a "megafloat" that can hold about 2.5 million gallons. Japan has also reportedly asked Russia to send a floating radiation treatment plant called the Suzuran that was used to decommission Russian nuclear submarines in the Pacific port of Vladivostok. The Suzuran was built in Japan a decade ago.
Yet even using barges and tanks to temporarily handle the water creates a future problem of how to dispose of the contaminated vessels.
U.S. and Japanese experts say the key to solving the disposal cable ties problem involves reducing the volume of water by concentrating the radioactive elements so they can be solidified into a safer, dry form. But waste experts disagree on exactly how to do that.
The difficulty of concentrating and then solidifying the contaminants depends on how much radioactivity is in the water, the type of isotopes and whether the work can be done on the Fukushima site.
UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Edward Morse said the water needs to be diverted into a concrete-lined holding pond fairly soon, where natural evaporation can help reduce its volume.
Youichi Enokida, a specialist in nuclear chemical engineering at Nagoya University in Japan, agrees that the material should be put into some type of storage that would concentrate it through evaporation, though Japanese experts generally talk golf irons about the need for a sealed pool.
Beck and Fox End Relationship Grown Cold
The negotiations that led Glenn Beck to announce his departure from the Fox News Channel on Wednesday ended with an expression of “let’s part as friends,” according to several people with knowledge of the talks. But behind that moment was a torrent of acrimony that underscored just how fractious the relationship between Mr. Beck and the network had become high pressure sodium lamp during his three-year run on Fox.
Mr. Beck’s official departure was preceded by conversations over a period of months with the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes. Even as Mr. Beck and Mr. Ailes described how much they liked each other in an interview with The Associated Press, the message conveyed between the lines by both sides was that, despite ratings that would normally bring about an automatic contract renewal, this was a relationship that had grown cold — and run its course.
On Wednesday, the two sides made it official, announcing that Mr. Beck would end his top-rated show at some unspecified point later this year. His contract with Fox ends in December, but he is expected to sign off well before then.
Hired away from CNN’s Headline News in 2008, Mr. Beck found a home at Fox News, giving voice to disaffected Americans who were deeply troubled by President Obama’s election. He reached as many as three million viewers on some nights, setting time-slot records for Fox. Although his ratings have since declined — he averaged 1.9 million viewers in March — he still dominates the 5 p.m. hour among the cable news networks.
Notably, Mr. Beck became a daily broadcast platform for a libertarian strain of politics that is also evident in the Tea Party, a movement he embraced. Critics loudly condemned him for living with his own facts — but that only seemed to widen the golf irons conspiracy that he outlined each night, aided by a growing number of chalkboards in his studio.
But at that studio, he was unhappy from almost his first day on the job, which happened to be the day before Mr. Obama was inaugurated. Even in his first year, he was contemplating an exit from Fox and wondering if he could start his own channel.
Beck supporters presented a picture of constant sniping, planted stories about his declining ratings, and discomfort with his ability to build a career for himself outside the Fox News brand.
From Fox’s perspective, the facts about Mr. Beck’s run on the network have been public and indisputable. Among those were the refusal of hundreds of Fox advertisers to allow their commercials to be placed on Mr. Beck’s program, and a history of incendiary comments that attracted harsh backlash, including one where the host called President Obama a racist and another where cable ties he compared Reform Judaism to radical Islam. (He later apologized for both comments.)
Mr. Ailes suggested in the interview Wednesday that he was happy with the departure being characterized as either a cancellation or a decision by Mr. Beck to quit. Fox has retained all its other high-rated hosts in the past, but they didn’t come under the intense scrutiny that Mr. Beck has faced, nor the mass opposition from advertisers.
As onerous as that might have been to Fox financially, it did not seem to be an issue for Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of theNews Corporation. In two recent comments to shareholders, Mr. Murdoch defended Mr. Beck. He said of the advertiser boycott, “They don’t boycott watching it. We’re getting incredible numbers.” He followed that by pointing out that even with his diminished ratings, Mr. Beck’s show provided a “terrific kickoff” to the lineup of Fox shows that followed.
But the ratings clearly could not overcome the fractures in the led bulbs relationship. “By the end both sides had had enough,” said one executive who was involved in the decision to end the deal.
Mr. Beck’s new deal with Fox allows him to develop and produce new projects for Fox and its Web sites. But those projects are likely to amount to occasional specials and appearances, nothing more.
Mr. Beck is known to have contemplated an expansion of his subscription Web site and a takeover of a cable channel in whole or in part. Already, his growing media company produces several hours of shows on the Web each weekday.
A spokesman for Mr. Beck declined to say whether the agreement included a noncompete clause that would preclude Mr. Beck from hosting a TV show elsewhere for a period of time. On his show on Wednesday, Mr. Beck said to damper his viewers, “We will find each other,” adding later, “I’m going to be showing you other ways for us to connect.”
A senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts later this month.
Notably, descriptions of Mr. Beck’s future plans drew derisive comments in some quarters of Fox News, where they argued that Mr. Beck needed the huge platform of his Fox show to build his media empire.
At times, Mr. Beck and his managers said they sensed that Fox was retaliating in public, although they did not prove it.
Last month, when Mr. Cheatwood was first said to be moving over to Mercury, his Fox salary was suddenly leaked to a reporter. That day, a staff member who had been working with Fox on Mr. Beck’s show was asked if he could imagine working at an institution that would leak a salary figure. The staff member replied, “Not only can I imagine it, we’ve done it for 27 months,” referring to the precise hydraulic orbital motor number of months Mr. Beck had been at Fox. “It’s not fun.”
Mr. Beck’s official departure was preceded by conversations over a period of months with the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes. Even as Mr. Beck and Mr. Ailes described how much they liked each other in an interview with The Associated Press, the message conveyed between the lines by both sides was that, despite ratings that would normally bring about an automatic contract renewal, this was a relationship that had grown cold — and run its course.
On Wednesday, the two sides made it official, announcing that Mr. Beck would end his top-rated show at some unspecified point later this year. His contract with Fox ends in December, but he is expected to sign off well before then.
Hired away from CNN’s Headline News in 2008, Mr. Beck found a home at Fox News, giving voice to disaffected Americans who were deeply troubled by President Obama’s election. He reached as many as three million viewers on some nights, setting time-slot records for Fox. Although his ratings have since declined — he averaged 1.9 million viewers in March — he still dominates the 5 p.m. hour among the cable news networks.
Notably, Mr. Beck became a daily broadcast platform for a libertarian strain of politics that is also evident in the Tea Party, a movement he embraced. Critics loudly condemned him for living with his own facts — but that only seemed to widen the golf irons conspiracy that he outlined each night, aided by a growing number of chalkboards in his studio.
But at that studio, he was unhappy from almost his first day on the job, which happened to be the day before Mr. Obama was inaugurated. Even in his first year, he was contemplating an exit from Fox and wondering if he could start his own channel.
Beck supporters presented a picture of constant sniping, planted stories about his declining ratings, and discomfort with his ability to build a career for himself outside the Fox News brand.
From Fox’s perspective, the facts about Mr. Beck’s run on the network have been public and indisputable. Among those were the refusal of hundreds of Fox advertisers to allow their commercials to be placed on Mr. Beck’s program, and a history of incendiary comments that attracted harsh backlash, including one where the host called President Obama a racist and another where cable ties he compared Reform Judaism to radical Islam. (He later apologized for both comments.)
Mr. Ailes suggested in the interview Wednesday that he was happy with the departure being characterized as either a cancellation or a decision by Mr. Beck to quit. Fox has retained all its other high-rated hosts in the past, but they didn’t come under the intense scrutiny that Mr. Beck has faced, nor the mass opposition from advertisers.
As onerous as that might have been to Fox financially, it did not seem to be an issue for Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of theNews Corporation. In two recent comments to shareholders, Mr. Murdoch defended Mr. Beck. He said of the advertiser boycott, “They don’t boycott watching it. We’re getting incredible numbers.” He followed that by pointing out that even with his diminished ratings, Mr. Beck’s show provided a “terrific kickoff” to the lineup of Fox shows that followed.
But the ratings clearly could not overcome the fractures in the led bulbs relationship. “By the end both sides had had enough,” said one executive who was involved in the decision to end the deal.
Mr. Beck’s new deal with Fox allows him to develop and produce new projects for Fox and its Web sites. But those projects are likely to amount to occasional specials and appearances, nothing more.
Mr. Beck is known to have contemplated an expansion of his subscription Web site and a takeover of a cable channel in whole or in part. Already, his growing media company produces several hours of shows on the Web each weekday.
A spokesman for Mr. Beck declined to say whether the agreement included a noncompete clause that would preclude Mr. Beck from hosting a TV show elsewhere for a period of time. On his show on Wednesday, Mr. Beck said to damper his viewers, “We will find each other,” adding later, “I’m going to be showing you other ways for us to connect.”
A senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts later this month.
Notably, descriptions of Mr. Beck’s future plans drew derisive comments in some quarters of Fox News, where they argued that Mr. Beck needed the huge platform of his Fox show to build his media empire.
At times, Mr. Beck and his managers said they sensed that Fox was retaliating in public, although they did not prove it.
Last month, when Mr. Cheatwood was first said to be moving over to Mercury, his Fox salary was suddenly leaked to a reporter. That day, a staff member who had been working with Fox on Mr. Beck’s show was asked if he could imagine working at an institution that would leak a salary figure. The staff member replied, “Not only can I imagine it, we’ve done it for 27 months,” referring to the precise hydraulic orbital motor number of months Mr. Beck had been at Fox. “It’s not fun.”
Portugal aid could mark end of spreading crisis
Investors had believed for months that a bailout for Portugal was almost inevitable, so the announcement by caretaker Prime Minister Jose Socrates on Wednesday is unlikely to hurt financial markets. The euro barely moved in the initial hours hydraulic orbital motor after the announcement.
The expected size of the bailout, 60-80 billion euros ($86 billion - $115 billion) according to a senior euro zone source, will not strain the euro zone's 440 billion euro bailout fund, especially since the International Monetary Fund is likely to be involved. Based on past bailouts, it would contribute about a third of the amount.
Many investors will see the request for aid as positive since it promises to avoid a worst-case scenario in which Portugal would have limped along under a minority government until general elections scheduled for June 5, refusing to seek help and digging an ever-bigger economic hole for itself.
This would have continued to push up Portuguese bond yields and threatened a collapse of its finances that might have prompted markets to start attacking Spain, widely seen as the next potential domino in the euro zone.
Other governments in the zone have therefore been pressing Portugal to damper request a bailout, and Lisbon's willingness to comply -- despite its bad memories of IMF-ordered austerity in the 1980s -- suggests the region remains able to summon enough political unity to address its debt problems.
"This is good news. We've been saying for a while that Portugal's finances were not sustainable at these rates," Erik Nielsen, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs, told Reuters. "We think the contagion stops here."
As recently as the turn of the year, it seemed likely that markets would target Spain if Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in seeking a bailout.
But the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has unveiled a series of reforms of the labor market, pensions and banking sector in past months. A stabilization of Spanish bond spreads shows many investors now believe it can avoid the fate of its smaller neighbor.
Portugal will have to agree to tough austerity targets to obtain a bailout, and how quickly a deal can be negotiated is unclear. Socrates resigned abruptly last month after his latest package of austerity measures was voted down in parliament, and his caretaker government has said it lacks the authority to negotiate an economic adjustment program.
European Union officials may also be loath to pursue an agreement led bulbs before a new government emerges in the aftermath of the June 5 elections. In the case of >Ireland, the EU sealed a bailout deal with a lame duck administration only to face demands for changes from a new government in Dublin.
However, now that it is requesting aid, Portugal has much better prospects of obtaining some kind of bridging loan if that is necessary to tide it over until a full bailout deal.
And unlike Ireland, where crumbling banks have been a black hole for state funds, and Greece, which is struggling against ingrained tax evasion and corruption, Portugal may be a relatively straightforward case for the EU and the IMF.
The country already has an austerity plan in place which has received the blessing of EU governments and IMF officials.
Also, Europe has learned lessons from the two previous bailouts. There is now a broad consensus in policymaking circles that the rescue terms for Greece and Ireland were too onerous, straining their economies and finances, so Portugal can hope to get somewhat softer terms in some areas.
"Investors no longer seem to be worried about a full-blown euro zone crisis and the potential demise of the common currency because they assume mechanisms are now in place to prevent the crisis from escalating out of control," said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at U.S. firm Dwight Asset Management.
DEBT, BANK RISKS
Still, while a Portuguese bailout may end the geographical spread of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone, it will not remove two big risks faced by the weakest countries: the possibility of sovereign debt restructurings, and the cable ties threat of deeper problems in the banking sector.
Some senior government officials in the zone are now acknowledging for the first time in private that some form of debt restructuring for Greece may be inevitable, even though officials publicly deny it will happen.
A number of economists believes the same fate may await Ireland and Portugal, although probably at a later
date.
Those fears are likely to keep market interest rates in all three countries very high for years, even if the countries do carry out the economic and fiscal reforms demanded by the EU and the IMF.
Joao Leite, head of investment at Banco Carregosa in Lisbon, said international aid would solve Portugal's financing problems but that the country still faced a daunting task addressing its large deficits, competitiveness golf irons problems and weak growth.
"Unfortunately, the solutions to these problems will only have an impact over the longer term. Until then the Portuguese have a hard road ahead."
The expected size of the bailout, 60-80 billion euros ($86 billion - $115 billion) according to a senior euro zone source, will not strain the euro zone's 440 billion euro bailout fund, especially since the International Monetary Fund is likely to be involved. Based on past bailouts, it would contribute about a third of the amount.
Many investors will see the request for aid as positive since it promises to avoid a worst-case scenario in which Portugal would have limped along under a minority government until general elections scheduled for June 5, refusing to seek help and digging an ever-bigger economic hole for itself.
This would have continued to push up Portuguese bond yields and threatened a collapse of its finances that might have prompted markets to start attacking Spain, widely seen as the next potential domino in the euro zone.
Other governments in the zone have therefore been pressing Portugal to damper request a bailout, and Lisbon's willingness to comply -- despite its bad memories of IMF-ordered austerity in the 1980s -- suggests the region remains able to summon enough political unity to address its debt problems.
"This is good news. We've been saying for a while that Portugal's finances were not sustainable at these rates," Erik Nielsen, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs, told Reuters. "We think the contagion stops here."
As recently as the turn of the year, it seemed likely that markets would target Spain if Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in seeking a bailout.
But the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has unveiled a series of reforms of the labor market, pensions and banking sector in past months. A stabilization of Spanish bond spreads shows many investors now believe it can avoid the fate of its smaller neighbor.
Portugal will have to agree to tough austerity targets to obtain a bailout, and how quickly a deal can be negotiated is unclear. Socrates resigned abruptly last month after his latest package of austerity measures was voted down in parliament, and his caretaker government has said it lacks the authority to negotiate an economic adjustment program.
European Union officials may also be loath to pursue an agreement led bulbs before a new government emerges in the aftermath of the June 5 elections. In the case of >Ireland, the EU sealed a bailout deal with a lame duck administration only to face demands for changes from a new government in Dublin.
However, now that it is requesting aid, Portugal has much better prospects of obtaining some kind of bridging loan if that is necessary to tide it over until a full bailout deal.
And unlike Ireland, where crumbling banks have been a black hole for state funds, and Greece, which is struggling against ingrained tax evasion and corruption, Portugal may be a relatively straightforward case for the EU and the IMF.
The country already has an austerity plan in place which has received the blessing of EU governments and IMF officials.
Also, Europe has learned lessons from the two previous bailouts. There is now a broad consensus in policymaking circles that the rescue terms for Greece and Ireland were too onerous, straining their economies and finances, so Portugal can hope to get somewhat softer terms in some areas.
"Investors no longer seem to be worried about a full-blown euro zone crisis and the potential demise of the common currency because they assume mechanisms are now in place to prevent the crisis from escalating out of control," said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at U.S. firm Dwight Asset Management.
DEBT, BANK RISKS
Still, while a Portuguese bailout may end the geographical spread of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone, it will not remove two big risks faced by the weakest countries: the possibility of sovereign debt restructurings, and the cable ties threat of deeper problems in the banking sector.
Some senior government officials in the zone are now acknowledging for the first time in private that some form of debt restructuring for Greece may be inevitable, even though officials publicly deny it will happen.
A number of economists believes the same fate may await Ireland and Portugal, although probably at a later
date.
Those fears are likely to keep market interest rates in all three countries very high for years, even if the countries do carry out the economic and fiscal reforms demanded by the EU and the IMF.
Joao Leite, head of investment at Banco Carregosa in Lisbon, said international aid would solve Portugal's financing problems but that the country still faced a daunting task addressing its large deficits, competitiveness golf irons problems and weak growth.
"Unfortunately, the solutions to these problems will only have an impact over the longer term. Until then the Portuguese have a hard road ahead."
A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive
Microsoft and Toyota announced today a joint venture to create a system for energy management of plug-in cars for now -- and perhaps to oversee energy use in the home, as well, in the future.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer held a high pressure sodium lamp joint webcast to announce creation of Toyota Media Service, a Toyota subsidiary that will provide the data service to drivers. The two companies will invest about $12 million in the venture.
The first application of the system -- which will be based on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform -- will be to manage energy use for the plug-in version of the Prius due in the first half next year. That Prius will be able to go about 13 miles on electric power only with a full charge from the power grid.
The system eventually will manage every electric thing in your life, including making your coffee in the morning:
Just kidding about the coffee, but not about everything else: Toyoda said, the system could link owners with their cars, their home appliances, heating and AC and control and their utility company's "smart grid" to minimize energy use, to schedule use for times when rates are lowest, to have your car ready when you are with its temperature preset and your most efficient route already dialed up in the navigation system. The link could dial down the energy use of your home while you're away and ramp up the heating or air conditioning as you approach so the house is just right.
"Our cars will play a big role in the global expansion of what we call 'smart centers' … on-board systems capable of better managing overall energy consumption of cars… driving trips…and homes," said Toyoda. " For example, this new system will include advanced car telematics like virtual operators with voice recognition … management of vehicle charging to reduce stress on energy supply…and remote control of appliances, heating and lighting at home."
For Toyota, which is trying to build up the infotainment and energy management tools for its electrified vehicles, the access to "Microsoft's vast information infrastructure" will, said Toyoda, "boost the value of golf irons automobiles by making them 'information terminals' …moving beyond today's GPS navigation and wireless safety communications, while at the same time enhancing driver and traffic safety."
Microsoft gets a high-profile user for Windows Azure, its software in the "cloud" -- i.e. that delivers services via the Internet rather than being loaded on a particular computer.
"Starting in 2012, customers who purchase one of Toyota's electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles will be able to connect via the cloud to control and monitor their car from anywhere," said Ballmer. "For example, customers will be able to turn on the heat or AC in their car while their vehicle is plugged into the grid or dynamically monitor miles until the next charging station right from their GPS system."
Ballmer said the cloud-based system will be particularly important for the car company in emerging markets, "Toyota will be able to deliver these new applications and services in the 170 countries where Toyota cars are sold. Historically, this type of service was limited to only major markets where the automotive maker could build and maintain a data center." Toyota will also have the benefit of paying cable ties for only the computing power it uses while being able to quickly scale to support spikes in demand or entry into new markets."
Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer held a high pressure sodium lamp joint webcast to announce creation of Toyota Media Service, a Toyota subsidiary that will provide the data service to drivers. The two companies will invest about $12 million in the venture.
The first application of the system -- which will be based on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform -- will be to manage energy use for the plug-in version of the Prius due in the first half next year. That Prius will be able to go about 13 miles on electric power only with a full charge from the power grid.
The system eventually will manage every electric thing in your life, including making your coffee in the morning:
Just kidding about the coffee, but not about everything else: Toyoda said, the system could link owners with their cars, their home appliances, heating and AC and control and their utility company's "smart grid" to minimize energy use, to schedule use for times when rates are lowest, to have your car ready when you are with its temperature preset and your most efficient route already dialed up in the navigation system. The link could dial down the energy use of your home while you're away and ramp up the heating or air conditioning as you approach so the house is just right.
"Our cars will play a big role in the global expansion of what we call 'smart centers' … on-board systems capable of better managing overall energy consumption of cars… driving trips…and homes," said Toyoda. " For example, this new system will include advanced car telematics like virtual operators with voice recognition … management of vehicle charging to reduce stress on energy supply…and remote control of appliances, heating and lighting at home."
For Toyota, which is trying to build up the infotainment and energy management tools for its electrified vehicles, the access to "Microsoft's vast information infrastructure" will, said Toyoda, "boost the value of golf irons automobiles by making them 'information terminals' …moving beyond today's GPS navigation and wireless safety communications, while at the same time enhancing driver and traffic safety."
Microsoft gets a high-profile user for Windows Azure, its software in the "cloud" -- i.e. that delivers services via the Internet rather than being loaded on a particular computer.
"Starting in 2012, customers who purchase one of Toyota's electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles will be able to connect via the cloud to control and monitor their car from anywhere," said Ballmer. "For example, customers will be able to turn on the heat or AC in their car while their vehicle is plugged into the grid or dynamically monitor miles until the next charging station right from their GPS system."
Ballmer said the cloud-based system will be particularly important for the car company in emerging markets, "Toyota will be able to deliver these new applications and services in the 170 countries where Toyota cars are sold. Historically, this type of service was limited to only major markets where the automotive maker could build and maintain a data center." Toyota will also have the benefit of paying cable ties for only the computing power it uses while being able to quickly scale to support spikes in demand or entry into new markets."
Eat freeze-dried strawberry may help prevent esophageal cancer
Freeze-dried strawberries may play a role in the prevention of esophageal cancer, a new study suggests.
"Strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other hydraulic orbital motor chemopreventive drugs for the prevention of esophageal cancer," said lead researcher Tong Chen, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, division of medical oncology, department of internal medicine at the Ohio State University.
Study findings were presented at the ongoing 102nd annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Orlando, Florida, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Wednesday.
"We concluded from this study that six months of eating strawberries is safe and easy to consume. In addition, our preliminary data suggests that strawberries can decrease histological grade of precancerous lesions and reduce cancer- related molecular events," said Chen, who is also a member of the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program in the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study involved a group of participants who consumed 60 grams of freeze-dried strawberries daily for six months and completed a dietary diary chronicling their strawberry consumption.
The researchers obtained biopsy specimens before and after strawberry consumption. The results showed that 29 out of 36 participants damper experienced a decrease in histological grade of the precancerous lesions during the study.
Using freeze-dried strawberries was important because by removing the water from the berries, they concentrated the preventive substances by nearly 10-fold, Chen said.
Esophageal cancer is the third most common gastrointestinal cancer and the sixth most frequent cause of cancer death in the world, she noted.
Chen and her team are studying esophageal squamous cell led bulbs carcinoma (SCC) which makes up 95 percent of cases of esophageal cancer worldwide. China, where this study took place, has the highest incidence of esophageal SCC, according to the AAAS.
In a previous study, Chen and colleagues found that freeze- dried strawberries significantly inhibited tumor development in the esophagus of rats. Based on these results, they embarked on a Phase Ib trial that included participants with esophageal precancerous lesions cable ties who were at high risk for esophageal cancer.
"Our study is important because it shows that strawberries may slow the progression of precancerous lesion in the esophagus," Chen said.
But she said they need to test this in randomized placebo- controlled trials in the future.
"Strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other hydraulic orbital motor chemopreventive drugs for the prevention of esophageal cancer," said lead researcher Tong Chen, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, division of medical oncology, department of internal medicine at the Ohio State University.
Study findings were presented at the ongoing 102nd annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Orlando, Florida, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Wednesday.
"We concluded from this study that six months of eating strawberries is safe and easy to consume. In addition, our preliminary data suggests that strawberries can decrease histological grade of precancerous lesions and reduce cancer- related molecular events," said Chen, who is also a member of the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program in the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study involved a group of participants who consumed 60 grams of freeze-dried strawberries daily for six months and completed a dietary diary chronicling their strawberry consumption.
The researchers obtained biopsy specimens before and after strawberry consumption. The results showed that 29 out of 36 participants damper experienced a decrease in histological grade of the precancerous lesions during the study.
Using freeze-dried strawberries was important because by removing the water from the berries, they concentrated the preventive substances by nearly 10-fold, Chen said.
Esophageal cancer is the third most common gastrointestinal cancer and the sixth most frequent cause of cancer death in the world, she noted.
Chen and her team are studying esophageal squamous cell led bulbs carcinoma (SCC) which makes up 95 percent of cases of esophageal cancer worldwide. China, where this study took place, has the highest incidence of esophageal SCC, according to the AAAS.
In a previous study, Chen and colleagues found that freeze- dried strawberries significantly inhibited tumor development in the esophagus of rats. Based on these results, they embarked on a Phase Ib trial that included participants with esophageal precancerous lesions cable ties who were at high risk for esophageal cancer.
"Our study is important because it shows that strawberries may slow the progression of precancerous lesion in the esophagus," Chen said.
But she said they need to test this in randomized placebo- controlled trials in the future.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Brown ends talks on bipartisan budget deal
Gov. Jerry Brown abandoned his effort to negotiate a bipartisan budget Tuesday, charging that Republicans were unwilling to support his plan to put taxes before voters unless he yielded to "an metal halide lamp ever-changing list of collateral demands."
The governor's announcement that he is walking away from the negotiating table, made in a late-afternoon
press release, places the state's finances in further turmoil.
Budget cuts that lawmakers approved earlier this month closed only a fraction of the state's $26-billion
budget shortfall. Brown wanted to close much of the rest of the gap with a special election in June, when
voters would have the option of extending temporary increases in taxes on income, sales and vehicles that will all have expired by July 1.
The governor needed at least four GOP votes to get that measure on the ballot. On Tuesday, he announced that weeks of talks have led nowhere. Brown said he was giving up on his plan.
"Each and every Republican legislator I've spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote
unless I agree to an ever-changing list of collateral demands," his statement said.
Brown said he was willing to make concessions on key policy issues that are important to Republicans.
"Let me be clear: I support pension reform, regulatory reform and a spending cap 3d prototype and offered specific and detailed proposals for each of these during our discussions," his statement said. "While we made significant progress on these reform issues, the Republicans continued to insist on including demands that would materially undermine any semblance of a balanced budget. In fact, they sought to worsen the state's problem by creating a $4-billion hole in the budget."
He cited as an example the GOP demand that he eliminate from his proposed budget a change in the tax code to end a tax break given to California companies that move jobs out of state.
Administration officials and legislative leaders declined to elaborate on how they intend to proceed. They would say that a June election is no longer part of their plans.
Earlier in the day, key GOP lawmakers who had been negotiating with the governor had declared the talks fruitless. They announced that they, too, were walking away from the negotiating table.
"We gave it our best. We're very disappointed. It's done," said Sen. Bill Emmerson (R-Hemet).
Talks involving business groups and union leaders as well as Brown and GOP lawmakers had moved in fits and starts for weeks. Impasses have been declared before. But all sides made clear that by Tuesday, talks were over.
There were several major disagreements that could not be overcome, Emmerson said. One was how to impose a cap on state spending. Another was the amount of time voters would be asked to renew billions in temporary taxes on income, sales and vehicles in a June election. Brown wants to extend the taxes for five years. Republicans wanted three years.
The third problem area was a GOP demand to place a change in a business-tax formula before voters. Brown wants the Legislature to change the formula.
Emmerson called Brown a "very honorable adversary" in negotiations but said the divide bakugans between them could not be bridged even though much progress had been made on changes to state regulations and pensions.
The governor's announcement that he is walking away from the negotiating table, made in a late-afternoon
press release, places the state's finances in further turmoil.
Budget cuts that lawmakers approved earlier this month closed only a fraction of the state's $26-billion
budget shortfall. Brown wanted to close much of the rest of the gap with a special election in June, when
voters would have the option of extending temporary increases in taxes on income, sales and vehicles that will all have expired by July 1.
The governor needed at least four GOP votes to get that measure on the ballot. On Tuesday, he announced that weeks of talks have led nowhere. Brown said he was giving up on his plan.
"Each and every Republican legislator I've spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote
unless I agree to an ever-changing list of collateral demands," his statement said.
Brown said he was willing to make concessions on key policy issues that are important to Republicans.
"Let me be clear: I support pension reform, regulatory reform and a spending cap 3d prototype and offered specific and detailed proposals for each of these during our discussions," his statement said. "While we made significant progress on these reform issues, the Republicans continued to insist on including demands that would materially undermine any semblance of a balanced budget. In fact, they sought to worsen the state's problem by creating a $4-billion hole in the budget."
He cited as an example the GOP demand that he eliminate from his proposed budget a change in the tax code to end a tax break given to California companies that move jobs out of state.
Administration officials and legislative leaders declined to elaborate on how they intend to proceed. They would say that a June election is no longer part of their plans.
Earlier in the day, key GOP lawmakers who had been negotiating with the governor had declared the talks fruitless. They announced that they, too, were walking away from the negotiating table.
"We gave it our best. We're very disappointed. It's done," said Sen. Bill Emmerson (R-Hemet).
Talks involving business groups and union leaders as well as Brown and GOP lawmakers had moved in fits and starts for weeks. Impasses have been declared before. But all sides made clear that by Tuesday, talks were over.
There were several major disagreements that could not be overcome, Emmerson said. One was how to impose a cap on state spending. Another was the amount of time voters would be asked to renew billions in temporary taxes on income, sales and vehicles in a June election. Brown wants to extend the taxes for five years. Republicans wanted three years.
The third problem area was a GOP demand to place a change in a business-tax formula before voters. Brown wants the Legislature to change the formula.
Emmerson called Brown a "very honorable adversary" in negotiations but said the divide bakugans between them could not be bridged even though much progress had been made on changes to state regulations and pensions.
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