Considering Microsoft's efforts to rebrand, redesign and rebuild its Windows platform, it's no surprise to hear the company is tweaking the visual aesthetics of its other brands, too. Speaking at Design Day 2013, Wolff Olins creative director Todd Simmons and Windows Phone design studio manager Albert Shum talked about the challenges of rebranding a company like Microsoft. "We're still trying to figure out how to put a consumer face on this brand, as an ecosystem," Simmons said, explaining how the team wanted to get away from the idea of Microsoft being a top-down, monolithic entity. The discussion touched on the creation of the Windows 8 logo, but also shed light on efforts to revamp other Microsoft brands. "Other brands are coming along too," Simmons explained, teasing the audience with a pair of sketches. "Bing, Skype, Yammer, Xbox -- everything is under development." With Microsoft's next generation gaming hardware lurking just around the corner, the time for a new logo might just be nigh. Read on to see the pair's full 45-minute presentation for yourself. Sadly, the presentation was deleted from Vimeo a few hours after we wrote this article. Check out the source links for a brief summery of the presentation.
>>>hitting home in many other ways. among them, some cancer patients on medicare are being turned away from doctors officers.
lisa myers
has that story.
>>68-year-old
caroline
davis is being treated for
breast cancer
in
south carolina
. but she recently had to start getting her infusions of a costly chemo drug at a nearby hospital out patient facility.
>>it's waiting when i get there, it's just not like here at the cancer center.
>>caroline
says all the waitinging at the hospital adds to her level of exhaustion. dr. holiday says his center had no choice when medicare cut reimbursements to doctors who administer those drugs by 2%. some private clinics are finding that harder to absorb than hospitals.
>>approximately 75% of her most commonly used therapeutics cost us more to administer. we can't continue to function that way.
>>and a new york onkole ji clinic decided it could no longer see one-third of its patients.
>>they have to shift their care somewhere is unconscionable and we just need people to fix this.
>>but officials say they don't have the power to roll back the 2% cut and argue the system has been highly profitable for many clinics. in fact, the president's new budget proposes an even bigger adjustment coupled with rebates on drug prices for smaller clinics. a spokesman says this will ensure access and reduce overpayments, but many cancer doctors disagree.
>>the cost of the drug will be the same. the problem is the reimbursement to the physician will be less and the physician potentially will go out of practice.
>>what's more, doctors argue that any savings from cutting their payments may be a mirage because it will push more treatment to hospitals, which studies show usually leads to higher costs for the patient and taxpayers. for
caroline
davis and thousands like her, this budget battle has already cost too much.
lisa myers
, nbc news, washington.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States should consider military action to curb Syrian chemical weapons after Washington went public with suspicions they have been used in the country's civil war, Israel's deputy foreign minister said on Friday.
The challenge by Zev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, underscored tension this week over the allies' assessments on Syria, as well as longer-running disputes about how aggressively to confront Iran's nuclear program.
The White House said on Thursday the Syrian government had probably employed chemical arms on a small scale against rebels. The disclosure created a bind for President Barack Obama, who has declared such use a "red line" that must not be crossed.
It was also a shift from Washington's skeptical response to Tuesday's publication by the Israeli military of intelligence findings that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces had used chemical weapons repeatedly in recent months.
"The Iranians are watching, the whole world is watching too, and we should also see what happens," Elkin told Israel's Army Radio, when asked how U.S. strategy on Syria might unfold.
"There is a question here of when you set a red line, do you stand behind it?"
Israel has threatened to strike Syria, an enemy with which it previously maintained a decades-old truce, to prevent Assad's chemical arsenal falling into the hands of jihadi insurgents or of Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.
There has been similar Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran. But the Jewish state, with its military and diplomatic clout limited in a volatile region, has made clear it would prefer Washington to take the lead on any major offensive.
Commenting on the shift in Washington's stance on Syria's chemical weapons, Elkin said: "If, until today, there has been an effort to ignore our opinion, to a degree ... now that the Americans' red line has apparently been crossed, there is a test.
"It is clear that if the United States wants to and the international community wants to, it could act - inter alia, militarily - to take control of the chemical weapons, and then all the fears ... will not be relevant."
He did not elaborate on what U.S. tactics he envisaged.
Wary of being drawn into another Middle East war in the name of curbing weapons of mass destruction, the Obama administration said it wanted definitive proof before intervening in Syria and was consulting with allies about possible steps.
The Assad government, shunned by much of the West as it battles an insurgency now in its third year, has denied using chemical arms - and hedged on whether it even possesses them.
Elkin said he expected world powers to clarify their position on Syria "in the coming days".
"It could be that the moment the international community understands that indeed the red lines were crossed, and indeed the weaponry was used, they will understand that there is no avoiding this action - that instead of leaving things in the fog, it is time to take control (of the arsenal)," he said.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by John Stonestreet)
(Ends first round) NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Selections in the first roundof the 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday (picknumber, NFL team, player, position, college): 1-Kansas City, Eric Fisher, offensive tackle, Central Michigan 2-Jacksonville, Luke Joeckel, offensive tackle, Texas A&M 3-Miami (from Oakland), Dion Jordan, defensive tackle, Oregon 4-Philadelphia, Lane Johnson, offensive tackle, Oklahoma 5-Detroit, Ezekiel Ansah, defensive end, Brigham Young 6-Cleveland, Barkevious Mingo, linebacker, LSU 7-Arizona, Jonathan Cooper, guard, North Carolina 8-St. ...
Apr. 25, 2013 ? A University of Washington astronomer is using Earth's interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.
"Characterization by proxy" is the technique used by Sarah Ballard, a post-doctoral researcher at the UW, to infer the properties of small, relatively cool stars too distant for measurement, by comparing them to closer stars that now can be directly observed.
Ballard is lead author of a study accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal that used this method and observations from the Kepler Space Telescope to learn the nature of the distant star Kepler-61.
Our understanding of the size and temperature of planets depends crucially on the size and temperature of the stars they orbit. Astronomers already have a robust way to discern the physical properties of solar-type stars -- those like the sun -- by measuring the light they emit at different wavelengths and matching that to synthetically created spectra.
"The challenge is that small stars are incredibly difficult to characterize," Ballard said. Those theoretical methods don't work well for what are called M-dwarf stars, lower-mass stars about half the size of the sun and smaller -- which is too bad, because such stars make up about three-quarters of the universe.
Ballard is using the characterization by proxy method to try to fill this knowledge gap. She is building on what she calls "truly remarkable" work by astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, now at Yale University, who uses a near-infrared interferometer -- an array of telescopes working in unison studying light wavelengths a bit longer than visible light -- to resolve the physical size of relatively nearby stars.
Ballard said her characterization by proxy method takes "full advantage that there now exists this precious sample" of relatively nearby stars that have been directly measured. You could say the method borrows a bit from Greek mathematician Euclid, whose first "common notion" held that things that equal the same thing must necessarily also equal each other.
In the new paper, Ballard and co-authors used this reasoning to learn about Kepler-61b, a planet orbiting near the inner edge of the habitable zone of the distant, low-mass star Kepler-61, about 900 light-years away in the Cygnus Constellation. A star's habitable zone is that swath of space just right for an orbiting planet's surface water to be in liquid form, thus giving life a chance.
She did this by comparing it to temperature size averages from four spectroscopically similar stars between 12 and 25 light-years away in the Ursa Major and Cygnus constellations. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles.
A funny thing also happened along the way: Kepler-61 turned out to be bigger and hotter than expected, which in turn recalibrated planet Kepler-61b's relative size upward as well -- meaning it, too, would be hotter than previously thought and no longer a resident of the star's habitable zone.
All of this caused Ballard to informally subtitle the paper, "How Nearby Stars Bumped a Planet out of the Habitable Zone."
Funding for the research came from NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Zynga Inc said on Wednesday the number of people playing its online games dropped dramatically in the first quarter, a development that overshadowed better-than-expected revenues and sent its stock tumbling in after-hours trade.
Shares fell 10 percent to $2.99 in extended trading.
The San Francisco-based publisher behind games like "FarmVille" and "Words With Friends" said its number of monthly players continued its decline to 253 million, the lowest figure since the number peaked at 331 million at the end of the third quarter of 2012.
On an adjusted basis, Zynga reported earnings of 1 cent per share, beating analyst expectations of a loss of 4 cents per share. But the company also projected that its second-quarter loss would be between 3 to 5 cents per share, exceeding the 1 cent per share loss analysts had expected.
"The second quarter guidance is light," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia. "We continue to think that any hope for real growth for this nebulous company really depends on what it can do in real-money gaming."
Zynga has struggled to keep users, who once flocked to its games on Facebook Inc's website. In recent months, Zynga and Facebook have revised their business partnership, as Zynga has sought to establish itself as a more independent gaming network at the risk of receiving less visitor traffic from Facebook.
Zynga has promised investors that it could tap into a potentially lucrative new revenue stream by launching real-money casino games around the world.
The company reported revenues of $263.6 million, down 18 percent from the year-ago quarter but above Wall Street's depressed expectations as the online game maker wrung more sales than expected out of its shrinking user base.
Zynga's quarterly bookings of $229.8 million also topped estimates but represented a 30 percent decline from a year ago.
(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)
Ever since going native on iOS, the Tumblr app's been on the receiving end of many, many new features and improvements. Now, continuing its ongoing efforts to make the application as good as can be, the microblogging site has released a new version for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners. As of today, Tumblr for iOS will now allow posts to be shared via email and a few major social networks -- including, as you'd expect, Facebook and Twitter. In addition, v3.3.1 brings added integration with Pocket and Instapaper, giving users the ability to save content to either service for offline reading at a later time. Busy couple of days, eh, Tumblr?
This is the story of a little smartphone series that grows up and, three years later, positions itself to take over the world. The device in question, the newest addition to that lineup, doesn't really need much of an introduction thanks to some of the most successful marketing campaigns in the world. We'll be happy to give it anyway: pictured atop this very text sits the Samsung Galaxy S 4, the latest and greatest flagship out of Korea. This is the hero, the device chosen to lead the charge for Samsung as it ventures deeper into 2013, and it's fitted with the best of everything: a 1080p Super AMOLED display, 1.9GHz quad-core (or 1.6GHz Exynos 5 Octa 5410, depending on market) chipset, Android 4.2, 13MP camera and a wide assortment of brand-new firmware amenities, to name just a few.
Despite the fact that its predecessor sold millions upon millions of units in the past year, the Galaxy S 4 isn't alone in its quest for global Android domination this time. HTC, the underdog of the fight, has launched the One, a flagship that rivals the GS 4 in almost every way and does so in a physically attractive package complete with a solid aluminum build. Where do these two devices stand in comparison to each other? Does the GS 4 reign supreme? Will its onslaught of new software features send the phone to the top of the pack? These answers and more await you after the break.
CAIRO (AP) ? U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel indicated on Wednesday that he was caught by surprise when Israeli officials publicly revealed their assessment that Syria has used chemical weapons in its civil war.
Hagel told reporters that his Israeli counterpart, Moshe Yaalon, did not alert him to the assessment when they met in Tel Aviv on Monday. The assessment was announced publicly on Tuesday by a senior official with Israel's military intelligence office.
"They did not give me that assessment; I guess it was not complete," Hagel said after several hours of meetings with senior Egyptian officials on the fourth stop of a week-long Mideast tour. "So I have not seen the specifics of it" or discussed it with Israeli officials.
He said he and Yaalon discussed the issue of Syria's chemical weapons, but Hagel would not elaborate further.
The Obama administration has said Syrian government use of chemical weapons would be a "game changer," implying that it might, if confirmed, compel the U.S. to get more directly involved in the civil conflict.
Hagel said that Washington is looking for "real intelligence" on the issue of Syrian chemical weapon use.
"Suspicions are one thing. Evidence is another," he said. "I think we have to be very careful here before we make any conclusions, draw any conclusions, based on real intelligence." He said his comments should not be interpreting as questioning the validity of other counties' intelligence on Syria. The important point, he said, is that "the United States relies on its own intelligence ? and must."
After his meetings in Cairo, which included talks with President Mohammed Morsi and the Egyptian defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Hagel flew to Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf.
Hagel said his Cairo stop was important for reinforcing U.S. support for the Egyptian government's transition to democracy and its efforts at economic reform.
By including Cairo on his first Mideast tour as defense secretary, Hagel was highlighting the Obama administration's hope of preserving influence with the Egyptian military as the country struggles with its transition to democracy.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The U.S. is deeply concerned, however, that continued instability in Egypt will have broader consequences in a region already rocked by unrest, including in the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula.
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) ? A car bomb targeted the French embassy in the Libyan capital early on Tuesday, wounding two French guards and causing extensive material damage, Libyan security officials said.
The explosives-laden car was detonated just outside the embassy building in Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood, the officials said.
The blast wounded two French guards and set off a fire at the embassy entrance that engulfed some of the offices inside, the officials said. Two cars parked outside also caught fire and two other nearby buildings were also damaged, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Firefighters rushed to the scene of the attack.
The officials said the motives for the attack ? the first such assault on an embassy in the Libyan capital ? were not immediately clear.
In Paris, the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned the bombing, calling it an "abhorrent act."
In a statement, Fabius said that the foreign ministry was "in liaison with the Libyan authorities" and that France will "do everything it can to shed light on the circumstances of this abhorrent act and to quickly identify the perpetrators."
Fabius also sent a message solidarity and sympathy to the two wounded French citizens, with a wish that that they recover soon.
The Libyan officials said that one of the wounded guards sustained severe injuries while the other was lightly hurt, adding that an investigation was underway.
Two years after the country's civil war, Libya is struggling to maintain security, build a unified army and reign in militias, which include rebels who fought to oust the country's longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Last September, militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission on the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.
___
Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this report.
LAKE MARY, Fla. (AP) ? A Florida-based compounding pharmacy is voluntarily recalling all lots of its sterile non-expired drug products sold nationwide over concerns the products are not sterile and may contain bacteria, Food and Drug Administration officials said Sunday.
The FDA encouraged health care facilities and providers who have received sterile products, including all injectables, from Balanced Solutions Compounding Pharmacy to immediately check their medical supplies, quarantine the products, and follow the company's recall instructions. Patients who were administered any sterile drug products produced and distributed by Balanced Solutions should contact their health care providers.
The recall includes a few dozen sterile products furnished nationwide, according to a statement from the company. The majority of the products were injectable drugs.
An FDA inspection of the company revealed "poor practices and conditions which may have exposed the company's sterile products to microbial contamination," officials said in a statement.
The FDA sampled chromium chloride injections from Balanced Solutions and identified gram-negative bacteria in the product, which can cause disease and many types of infection. But officials said the bacteria do not usually cause infection in humans.
Balanced Solutions is a division of Axium Healthcare Pharmacy Inc., which is based in Lake Mary.
An email and phone call to the company were not immediately returned Sunday.
With the shared unveiling of Nokia's Lumia 720 and Lumia 520, the company's running flush of Windows Phone 8 models was complete. All WP8 handsets we've reviewed essentially fit into two distinct tiers based on shared core specs. That begs the question: why come out with two new models now when both share the same SoC, amount of RAM and screen resolution as the established Lumia 620 and HTC 8S? Obviously, there are differences in design, cameras, display tech and all the other bobs and bits that create the 720, but is it worth the significant markup over the 620, and more than double the price of a 520 or Huawei Ascend W1? Enough with all the rhetorical questions -- join us after the break as we find out exactly what the Lumia 720 has to offer.
The Wildlife Society 2013 midyear Council Meeting was held March 24-25 during the 78th Annual North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Arlington, Virginia. New TWS Executive Director, Ken Williams, was welcomed and introduced to Council and members attending the meeting. Executive Director Williams briefed Council on his activities for the last three weeks and gave his impressions of the issues confronting TWS.
Council members voted on or agreed to implement various new initiatives and activities.
The TWS fiscal year will be changed to start 1 July 2014.
A new computer infrastructure and membership portal software will be purchased that will enhance member services.
The proceeds of the 2013 Investors Campaign will be dedicated to partially funding the new TWS computer infrastructure and membership portal.
The Renewable Energy Working Group request for official status was approved.
The Range Working Group request for interim status was approved.
The Wetlands Working Group request for a six-month extension of interim status was approved.
Thomas A. Roberts was approved for a seat on the Certification Review Board. An initiative to encourage more active collaboration with Mexican colleagues and members will be initiated.
TWS staff will be developing a plan for generating more frequent press releases on TWS journal papers that may have broad interest.
The Celebrate our Wildlife Conservation Heritage (COWCH) videos will be given a presence on the new online Retirees Center, and the Center?s content will be enhanced with content that?s relevant to TWS retirees.
The Policy Priorities for 2013 were approved. They are:
Climate Change and Adaptation
Endangered Species Recovery
Energy Development and Wildlife
Federal employee participation in professional societies
Apr. 18, 2013 ? A new report on the potential effects of climate change on NOAA's Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary uses existing observations and science-based expectations to identify how climate change could affect habitats, plants and animals within the sanctuary and adjacent coastal areas.
It also outlines new management recommendations for the sanctuary, and sanctuary officials called it the first step toward addressing them.
They also said the report issued by the sanctuary, Climate Change and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary: Interpreting Potential Futures, will provide a foundation of information and identify key issues facing the sanctuary.
"Climate change poses an increasingly grave threat to the health of the ocean, and its impacts will be felt in marine protected areas like the Olympic Coast sanctuary," said Carol Bernthal, sanctuary superintendent. "This report begins our work to develop management strategies that will help us anticipate potential challenges and adapt to the changing marine environment through sound science, public outreach, and partnerships."
According to the report, climate change could affect the sanctuary through increases in sea level; extreme weather events such as winds, waves, and storms; and coastal erosion from those events. The report also says the region may experience an increase in ocean acidity and water temperature, as well as more extreme weather patterns, including Pacific Northwest regional rainfall increases triggering 100-year magnitude floods.
Prepared and edited by Washington Sea Grant and sanctuary staff, the new climate report is the outcome of more than a year of intensive collaboration among subject matter experts representing 27 agencies, organizations and academic institutions.
The authors also made recommendations for future action for sanctuary management, including focus on public education, information gathering, and policy and management strategies. Scientists, educators, natural resource managers, and communicators will continue to work together to outline regional next steps forward.
MARSEILLE, France (AP) ? The computer records were scrubbed, inspectors said there was no mention of industrial silicone in quality-control documents, and an employee at the factory in southern France said they were instructed not to ask too many questions about the breast implants sold worldwide.
As a fraud trial opened Wednesday, hundreds of women who crowded into a makeshift courtroom were not the only ones claiming they were cheated by Poly Implant Prothese, which is accused of using cheap silicone to fill tens of thousands of implants that were prone to ruptures and leaking.
A former employee and the company that cleared PIP for certification said in interviews outside the court that they too were victims of the five former PIP executives on trial, and offered a glimpse into what they said was a years-long deception.
Jean-Claude Mas, who founded and ran the now-defunct company, is among those facing trial in the southern city of Marseille on charges of fraud and swindling. The company had claimed its factory in France exported to more than 60 countries and was one of the world's leading implant makers.
The implants were not available in the United States, but more than 125,000 women worldwide received them until sales ended in March 2010. Of those, more than 5,000 are joining the trial, saying the executives misled them into believing the silicone gel implants were safe.
Mas' lawyers said the number of women listed in the case as victims is the largest in French judicial history and argued that the trial was too unwieldy to continue. The packed hearing room had six large-screen televisions placed at even intervals to allow even those at the back to see, and judges frequently admonished spectators into silence.
Nathalie De Michel, who received the implants, said Wednesday she wanted Mas to acknowledge responsibility.
"We have the impression that he doesn't care. I want him at least to recognize that he made mistakes," she said.
Yves Haddad, Mas' lawyer, said his client was prepared: "He was ready to be here and to answer questions, and thinking about those who joined the case, even if it seems odd to some."
A former employee, who attended the trial Wednesday but asked not to be named because of the criminal allegations, said those who worked at the plant were told not to ask too many questions, even when women complained directly about medical problems. The employee said he suffered lung problems he blamed on years of handling unknown chemicals.
As investigators began uncovering the fraud, he said workers at the plant grabbed tubs of toxic materials and dumped them into the sewers to avoid detection.
A lawyer for TUV Rheinland, the Germany company that cleared PIP for certification, said its inspectors were also victims of a company-wide deception.
"The bad gel was taken away in trucks, the computer system was scrubbed of all references to it. Every employee lied. All the documentation was falsified," said Olivier Gutkes, a lawyer for TUV.
Mas declined comment as he entered the city's convention center ? which was turned into a courthouse to host all those participating in the trial. He has said he never intended harm and his lawyers said the company's failure ruined him financially ? a claim that drew angry murmurs from the crowd on Wednesday.
The vast majority of the implants were for cosmetic reasons. The rest were for breast reconstruction, often following cancer surgery. Within France, about a quarter of the implants malfunctioned, most by rupturing and leaking silicone, according to a government tally released earlier this month.
Doctors and scientists who have followed the case say medical complications stemming from the ruptures and leaks appear to be limited even when the implants rupture: rashes and localized pain were the most common complaints. But lawyers for the women say the full effects will not be known for years to come.
Nathalie Lozano, a Colombian lawyer who said she represents 1,500 women, said she came to Marseille to seek justice for clients she says lack the resources to pay for follow-up care.
"I could name very difficult cases of women who don't even have means to undergo exams and know what state their implants are in," she said. "They know that they are dangerous implants and nevertheless they don't even have a way to know if their implants are broken inside their body."
The implants in question were not sold in the U.S., where concerns about silicone gel implants overall led to a 14-year ban on their use. Silicone implants were brought back to the market in 2006 after research ruled out cancer, lupus and some other concerns, but the FDA still cautions that implants of any kind can rupture or cause other problems.
PIP ultimately went out of business, and regulators across Europe began demanding calls for tighter oversight of medical devices.
According to various government estimates, over 42,000 women in Britain received the implants, more than 30,000 in France, 25,000 in Brazil and 15,000 in Colombia. Venezuela, where PIP implants were hugely popular, offered free removals for the estimated 16,000 women with the implants, as did France.
Mas, his deputy Claude Couty, the quality director Hannelore Font, technical director Loic Gossart, and products chief Thierry Brinon face the possibility of five years in prison if convicted.
France has no system of class-action lawsuits, but people who feel they are victims can join criminal cases. Many of the women from abroad said they hoped a French decision in their favor would ultimately help them at home.
But that could prove more difficult because PIP is bankrupt, said Deborah Hensler, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in mass litigation.
"No lawyer would be willing to take on a case where she knows that in the end there's no way for the plaintiffs to recover," Hensler said.
Among the French women at Wednesday's trial, there seemed to be little expectation of reward.
"Women have lost their jobs because of him, their health because of him," said Joelle Manighetti, a French woman who received the implants after breast cancer surgery and blogs about her experiences. "With the way he has treated us from the beginning, I'm not expecting much from him."
___
Associated Press writer Libardo Cardona contributed from Bogota, Colombia.
___
Follow Lori Hinnant at https://twitter.com/lhinnant
If you figured Titan's title of the world's most powerful supercomputer would give the folks at Oakridge National Laboratory reason to rest on their laurels, you'd be mistaken. The computer is set to have its fleet of 18,688 NVIDIA K20 GPUs and equal number of AMD Opteron processors paired with what's said to be the planet's speediest storage system, making its file setup six times faster and giving it three times more capacity. Dubbed Spider II, the new hardware will endow the number cruncher with a peak performance of 1.4 terabytes a second and 40 petabytes of storage spread across 20,000 disk drives. Behind the refresh are 36 of Datadirect Networks' SFA12K-40 systems, which each pack 1.12PB of capacity. For more on the herculean rig's upgrade, hit the jump for the press release.
Mount Sinai study identifies new gene variations associated with heart ratePublic release date: 14-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Renatt Brodsky Renatt.Brodsky@mountsinai.org 212-241-9200 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Findings pinpoint 14 genetic targets in humans that may provide insight for the treatment of cardiovascular disease
(New York, NY April 14, 2013) Through a collaborative genome-wide study on individuals, researchers have discovered 14 new genetic variations that are associated with heart rate. Since heart rate is a marker of cardiovascular health, these findings could provide a better understanding of genetic regulation of heart beat and is a first step towards identifying targets for new drugs to treat cardiovascular disease.
The study, titled, "Identification of Heart Rate-Associated Loci and Their Effects on Cardiac Conduction and Rhythm Disorders," was published online this week in the April issue of Nature Genetics. Led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, UK, the collaboration involved 268 researchers from 211 institutions, as well as six large research consortia joined forces.
In order to gain new insights into the genetic regulation of heart rate, Dr. Ruth Loos, Director of the Genetics of Obesity and Related Metabolic Traits Program at the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai and honorary investigator at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and her team, spent three years working on a genome-wide association study using data from 181,171 participants from 65 studies during 2009-2012. "Without any prior hypothesis, we studied the entire human genome hoping to identify new genetic variations that no one before had even imagined would play a role in the regulation of heart rate," said Dr. Loos, senior author of the study. "This discovery is just the beginning of something new and exciting and can hopefully be used to identify new drugs that can be used for the treatment of heart rhythm disorders."
In a follow-up study, experimental down-regulation of gene expression was then conducted on fruit flies and zebra fish, to better understand how genetic variations might affect heart rate. These experiments identified 20 genes with a role in heart rate regulation, signal transmission, embryonic development of the heart, as well as cardiac disorders, such as dilated cardiomyopathy, congenital heart failure and sudden heart failure. "Our findings in humans as well as in fruit flies and zebrafish provide new insights into mechanisms that regulate heart rate," said Dr. Marcel den Hoed, post-doctoral fellow at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and lead author of the study.
The follow-up study also showed that a genetic susceptibility for higher heart rate is associated with altered cardiac conduction and a reduced risk of sick sinus syndrome, a common indicator for pacemaker implantation. "Our study tripled the number of genetic variations that are known to be associated with heart rate, some of which are also associated with other cardiovascular risk factors and with heart rhythm disorder," said Dr. Loos.
###
About The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine
The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine (IPM) drives innovation in the data-driven and gene-based individualization of healthcare. The Institute's groundbreaking work led to the creation of the BioMeBiobank Program to enable innovation in personalized healthcare. Over 23,000 Mount Sinai patients have enrolled in the BioMe program, which helps them receive more targeted, personalized care in real-time based on their own DNA through Mount Sinai's electronic medical record (EMR) system. The EMR-linked personalized medicine system empowers participating BioMe patients by providing tailored information in data-driven, gene-based personalized healthcare. This information includes each enrolled patient's unique genetic information and clinical data.
Mount Sinai patients who enroll in the BioMe program also contribute to medical breakthroughs by consenting to make their DNA, genetic and clinical information available for medical research in a secure and de-identified manner.
IPM also provides participating healthcare professionals with education, tools and resources for up-to-date practice guidelines incorporating the latest gene-based information for personalized healthcare.
For more information, visit http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/institutes/institute-for-personalized-medicine
About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Established in 1968, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of the leading medical schools in the United States. The Icahn School of Medicine is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty members in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report.
The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nation's top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Mount Sinai is one of just 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and by U.S. News & World Report and whose hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.
For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mount Sinai study identifies new gene variations associated with heart ratePublic release date: 14-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Renatt Brodsky Renatt.Brodsky@mountsinai.org 212-241-9200 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Findings pinpoint 14 genetic targets in humans that may provide insight for the treatment of cardiovascular disease
(New York, NY April 14, 2013) Through a collaborative genome-wide study on individuals, researchers have discovered 14 new genetic variations that are associated with heart rate. Since heart rate is a marker of cardiovascular health, these findings could provide a better understanding of genetic regulation of heart beat and is a first step towards identifying targets for new drugs to treat cardiovascular disease.
The study, titled, "Identification of Heart Rate-Associated Loci and Their Effects on Cardiac Conduction and Rhythm Disorders," was published online this week in the April issue of Nature Genetics. Led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, UK, the collaboration involved 268 researchers from 211 institutions, as well as six large research consortia joined forces.
In order to gain new insights into the genetic regulation of heart rate, Dr. Ruth Loos, Director of the Genetics of Obesity and Related Metabolic Traits Program at the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai and honorary investigator at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and her team, spent three years working on a genome-wide association study using data from 181,171 participants from 65 studies during 2009-2012. "Without any prior hypothesis, we studied the entire human genome hoping to identify new genetic variations that no one before had even imagined would play a role in the regulation of heart rate," said Dr. Loos, senior author of the study. "This discovery is just the beginning of something new and exciting and can hopefully be used to identify new drugs that can be used for the treatment of heart rhythm disorders."
In a follow-up study, experimental down-regulation of gene expression was then conducted on fruit flies and zebra fish, to better understand how genetic variations might affect heart rate. These experiments identified 20 genes with a role in heart rate regulation, signal transmission, embryonic development of the heart, as well as cardiac disorders, such as dilated cardiomyopathy, congenital heart failure and sudden heart failure. "Our findings in humans as well as in fruit flies and zebrafish provide new insights into mechanisms that regulate heart rate," said Dr. Marcel den Hoed, post-doctoral fellow at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and lead author of the study.
The follow-up study also showed that a genetic susceptibility for higher heart rate is associated with altered cardiac conduction and a reduced risk of sick sinus syndrome, a common indicator for pacemaker implantation. "Our study tripled the number of genetic variations that are known to be associated with heart rate, some of which are also associated with other cardiovascular risk factors and with heart rhythm disorder," said Dr. Loos.
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About The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine
The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine (IPM) drives innovation in the data-driven and gene-based individualization of healthcare. The Institute's groundbreaking work led to the creation of the BioMeBiobank Program to enable innovation in personalized healthcare. Over 23,000 Mount Sinai patients have enrolled in the BioMe program, which helps them receive more targeted, personalized care in real-time based on their own DNA through Mount Sinai's electronic medical record (EMR) system. The EMR-linked personalized medicine system empowers participating BioMe patients by providing tailored information in data-driven, gene-based personalized healthcare. This information includes each enrolled patient's unique genetic information and clinical data.
Mount Sinai patients who enroll in the BioMe program also contribute to medical breakthroughs by consenting to make their DNA, genetic and clinical information available for medical research in a secure and de-identified manner.
IPM also provides participating healthcare professionals with education, tools and resources for up-to-date practice guidelines incorporating the latest gene-based information for personalized healthcare.
For more information, visit http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/institutes/institute-for-personalized-medicine
About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Established in 1968, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of the leading medical schools in the United States. The Icahn School of Medicine is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty members in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report.
The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nation's top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Mount Sinai is one of just 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and by U.S. News & World Report and whose hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.
For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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I have been talking about a number of misconceptions in network marketing and this time I?m going to cover one which is a very interesting one. ?
In many people?s mind, network marketing is about chasing their friends and relatives. ??Oh, I don?t want to do that!? The thought of being in this Network Marketing chasing gang can be daunting for a stay-at-home mum!
What if you can do network marketing professionally? You don?t have to chase your friends and relatives.
How are we going to promote products, services or business opportunity if we are not chasing them? Simple, ?we just help them!
One of my favourite trainers Tom ?Big Al? Schreiter joked about that the mission of all professional network marketers is to promote World Peace.
When people are keen to know what you have to offer, you share. That?s it. And if people are not open to new ideas, not open to checking out what you have to offer, leave them alone.
This is a common question for ?serious network marketers. If I?m not chasing my friends and relatives, where can I find people to talk to??
A lot of people do network marketing by initially talking to their friends and relatives. This is mainly they know that the products and services can help them. Or, they believe that by promoting great products or services, they can bless their friends or relatives with an additional source of income. However, network marketing is not for everyone. Most people can only enrol just a few of their friends.?
Asking for referrals is a very effective?way of getting the network marketing business going. Yet, some people are actually loving the product so much that they would like to promote it. That is, they themselves goes into the business. ?They are to build their own business. They are not going to refer people to you. In that case, ?you will have to continue networking. ?This is what most mums can do well.
When done professionally, you continue to enrol others or get referrals from others who may know some other people who need the products or opportunity.
There is also one other newer breed of network marketing called ?attraction marketing?. Marketing is primarily done online. The whole online community knows what you are doing. If people are looking for opportunities or looking for products and services, they will resonate with what you have to offer. They will contact you. This is a whole new different dynamic. You definitely do not need to chase your friends and relatives if you decide to do network marketing that way!
If you ?would like to explore a little bit about this online attraction marketing, send me an email or leave a comment below. ?I?ll be more than happy to help you along this journey.?
PS:?While online attraction marketing is making a lot of buzz, attraction marketing can also be practised offline. How? Simply by doing network marketing professionally. Others will be attracted to you because of your professionalism.?
You can probably appreciate that chasing friends and relatives may not be the smartest move. I hope my blog post can be the wake up call for network marketers who are still chasing others like crazy!
I?d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! Do leave a comment. Thanks!
Tags: attraction marketing, chasing friends and relatives, network marketing
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Public release date: 14-Apr-2013
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