Archive for January, 2009

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YouTube Set for Hollywood Partnership

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

YouTube and the William Morris Agency are nearing a deal that would put the Hollywood talent broker’s clients in made-for-YouTube productions, according to a report in the New York Times.

The YouTube deal would reportedly give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the popular video Web site. William Morris represents the likes of actors Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe and producers Michael Bay and J.J. Abrams.

An agreement would give the agency’s clients, which also include musicians and other celebrities, access to at least 100 million viewers, the latest figure comScore offered for YouTube traffic.

“This is inevitable. It’s good for YouTube and good for people who are creating content that can’t find a place on the TV or cable networks,” said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media.

Monetizing YouTube Content

The New York Times cited anonymous sources who were not authorized to speak about the deal publicly. Those sources called the reported deal with the William Morris Agency YouTube’s most far-reaching agreement yet to add professionally produced videos to the site. Most of the videos are user-generated.

The William Morris Agency and YouTube could not immediately be reached for comment. But the Times quoted Fred Davis, a senior partner at entertainment law firm Davis, Shapiro, Lewit & Hayes, as saying that the deal may include traditional media talent looking to expand into Web properties.

“Although everyone realizes that the monetization of this content is not quite there yet, everyone also realizes the huge potential as the digital media business matures,” Davis told the Times.

Davis pegged YouTube’s prime motivator: monetizing content at its high-traffic video portal. The Google-owned company has attempted to generate revenue streams from advertising on the site, but most of the content is user-generated and the revenues have not reached what YouTube sees as the site’s potential. To reach that potential, the site needs premium content.

Searching for Premium Content

“YouTube would like to get premium content in addition to the user-generated videos. They would like to get NBC, ABC, CBS and the others to come on to YouTube. But those folks have been kind of reluctant to do that,” Leigh said. “YouTube has negotiated with them in good faith and asked for premium content. They made some progress. You can get old episodes of Star Trek on YouTube. There’s advertising on there and the copyright holder gets paid for that. But YouTube would like newer, more popular content, and Hollywood and the TV and cable network providers have been reluctant to offer it even with advertising support.”

The William Morris agency apparently feels differently. As Leigh sees it, the agency has clients who are producing shows that may be getting turned down by the networks. Others, as Davis mentioned, may want to explore the Web.

“There’s not a shadow of a doubt that these discussions with the William Morris agency have been going on for a long time,” Leigh said. “The fact that YouTube is finally agreeing to it here signals their disappointment with the Hollywood studios and the major networks not providing more than old episodes of Star Trek.”

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8 Is Enough: The Limits to Human Reproduction

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Eight kids at once. The mind boggles. The mind is also pretty creeped out by the thought of one tiny baby after another coming out of a woman as if she were a mouse.

It’s great those octuplets are here and healthy, but really, humans aren’t designed to have litters.

It’s basic energetics. Every individual has only so much energy. Some energy is spent staying alive - that is, finding food and not being somebody else’s food - and what’s left over can be spent on reproduction. In other words, there are limits to reproduction.

Of course, the various slices of that reproductive energy pie also vary between males and female of all species. Males don’t gestate or lactate so they pass on the most genes by flitting from female to female making as many babies as they can, and then walking away. The female reproductive pie is much more complex. There are costs to pregnancy, lactation for mammals, and then whatever else is needed to bring a kid up to sexual maturity so they can pass on genes as well.

But there are all sorts of ways, from an evolutionary point of view, for females of a species to distribute that energy and bring up babies successfully. She might have as many babies as she can in one shot, litters that is, and have them as often as possible. For that kind of female, reproduction is an assembly line of cheap production per kid. Or a female might opt for the other end of the scale and make one baby at a time and wait for a very long time to see if that one investment pays off.

Obviously, humans are on slow side of the baby production continuum. Evolution has selected for this path because there are features of our species that require great investment by mothers. Human infants might have big brains compared to other mammals, but they need to get even bigger once outside the womb. And so human infants are actually born neurologically unfinished. They can’t cling, sit up, feed themselves, or run from predators. And so the very nature of what it takes to be an adult human puts constraints on how many children a mother can have at a time.

Take a look at a naked woman and see for yourself how many babies a woman is designed to care for - two, at most.

In fact our babies need so much that human fathers, too, have been selected to stop fooling around and to stay at home with one female if they want to see their genes go forward. The evolution of the human family is not about men and women deciding to make a commitment; it’s really about the dependency of our children.

And we are so used to this system that we can’t help but stare in awe at twins and scream in shock at octuplets. It doesn’t seem right to have that many kids at once because it isn’t right in the evolutionary sense. That family will surely have help beyond the mother and father, and they will all probably have a great time, but chances are it will be a very long time before that mother reproduces again.

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Correction: Dish Network story

Friday, January 30th, 2009

In a Jan. 28 story about satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp., The Associated Press erroneously reported that Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung expects Dish to be near the release of new video recorders that avoid using technology involved in its patent dispute with TiVo Inc. Chung did not make that assertion. The analyst noted that a hearing in the patent case is scheduled for Feb. 17.

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ONGC Dec qtr net falls 43 pct on lower crude

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Oil and Natural Gas Corp, the country’s largest oil and gas explorer, posted a 43.4 percent drop in quarterly net profit on Wednesday, hit by lower crude oil prices, missing expectations.

October-December net profit fell to 24.75 billion rupees ($506 million) from 43.7 billion rupees a year ago. A Reuters poll of analysts had forecast net profit of 40.11 billion rupees.

Shares in ONGC fell 35.5 percent in the December quarter, in line with the sector sub-index but underperforming the benchmark index’s 25 percent drop.

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Fluorescent proteins are transforming biomedical research

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University say that remarkable new tools, which spotlight individual cellular molecules, are helping advance biomedical research.

They have revealed that these new tools are photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PAFPs) and other advanced fluorescent proteins (FPs).

Dr. Vladislav Verkhusha, associate professor of anatomy and structural biology at Einstein, says that PAFPs and FPs help noninvasively visualize the structures and processes in living cells at the molecular level.

The researcher says that it is now possible to follow cancer cells as they seek out blood vessels and spread throughout the body or to watch how cells manage intracellular debris, preventing premature aging.

The significance of this study lies in the fact that the new fluorescent proteins add considerably to the biomedical imaging revolution started by the 1992 discovery that the gene for a green fluorescent protein (GFP) found in a jellyfish could be fused to any gene in a living cell.

When the target gene is expressed, GFP lights up (fluoresces), creating a visual marker of gene expression and protein localization, via light (optical) microscopy.

While earlier technique could capture images only in non-living cells, the addition of PAFPs, more versatile versions of FPs, made it possible to do real-time SR fluorescence microscopy in living cells.

Dr. Verkhusha is said to have developed a variety of PAFPs and FPs for use in imaging mammalian cells, expanding the applications of fluorescence microscopy.

The collection includes PAFPs that can be turned on and off with a pulse of light, FPs that can fluoresce in different colors, and FPs that have better resolution for deep-tissue imaging.

The researcher most recently developed a red PAFP called PAmCherry1, which has faster photoactivation, improved contrast, and better stability compared to other PAFPs of its type.

“PAmCherry1 will allow improvements in several imaging techniques, notably two-color SR fluorescence microscopy, in which two different molecules or two biological processes can be viewed simultaneously in a single cell,” Nature Methods quoted the researcher as saying in its online version.

Dr. Verkhusha’s PAFPs have been used in several studies, providing new insights into a variety of biological processes.

In one of the studies, his PAFPs were used to capture the first nanoscale images of the orientation of molecules within biological structures.

“Such images could be useful in studying protein-protein interactions, the growth and collapse of intracellular structures, and many other biological questions,” says Dr. Verkhusha.

In another study, Dr. Verkhusha contributed a novel PAFP to a new method of viewing individual breast cancer cells for several days at a time, providing new details on how cancer cells invade surrounding tissue and reach blood vessels, a process called metastasis.

“Mapping the fate of tumor cells in different regions of a tumor was not possible before the development of the photoswitching technology,” explains John Condeelis, Ph.D., co-chair and professor of anatomy and structural biology and co-director of the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center.

Dr. Verkhusha has also developed new types of fluorescent proteins for use in conventional fluorescent microscopy, called fluorescent timers (FTs), which can change their colour from blue to red over a matter of hours.

“These FTs will enable scientists to study the trafficking of cellular proteins and to provide accurate insight into the timing of intracellular processes, such as activation or inhibition of gene expression or protein synthesis,” he says.

With the use of the FTs, he and his colleagues have shown for the first time how a protein called LAMP-2A, which scavenges cellular debris, is transported to intracellular organelles called lysosomes, where the debris is digested.

The researchers are of the opinion that understanding this process, which maintains the health of cells and organs, may lead to treatments to keep elderly people’s organs in prime condition.

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Joyent to Buy Open-source Google App Engine Competitor

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Cloud-computing platform vendor Joyent said Wednesday it is buying startup Reasonably Smart, a maker of a “direct, open-source competitor” to Google’s App Engine framework for quickly building and deploying Web applications that run on Google’s infrastructure.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Like Amazon Web Services and others, the Quebec-based Joyent sells scalable computing infrastructure. Reasonably Smart’s toolset will provide its customers with a “write-once/scale forever” Web application framework, according to a statement

The open-source software will be available through a paid service from Joyent, but users can also install it in their own data centers if they choose, Joyent said.

Along with big players like Google’s App Engine, the Reasonably Smart software will compete with Web application platforms from startups like 10gen, which is also open-source.

Reasonably Smart’s platform has developers create user interface elements in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), write server-side code with JavaScript and use the open-source Git version control system, according to its Web site.

JavaScript is a widely used client-side language on the Web. But on the server side, it may “still be considered a scripting language that would need to stand on the shoulders of ‘real’ server-side languages like Java, .Net, PHP, et cetera,” said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk.

But one Ann Arbor, Michigan, developer who works with JavaScript extensively said the language has clear strengths.

“One of the things that’s great about JavaScript is that the learning curve is very smooth,” said Charles Lowell, president and co-founder of The FrontSide Software, a custom software development firm. “I like its simplicity and its stripped-down nature, but as you get into it, you find it’s deeply extensible.”

Meanwhile, Reasonably Smart’s code will likely be further refined, as it is currently in alpha.

Joyent is a little further along. Formed in 2004, the Sausalito, California, company has more than 10,000 customers of all sizes, and its systems run 25 percent of the application traffic on Facebook, according to a statement.

Company representatives could immediately not be reached for additional comment Wednesday.

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DREAM gene regulates pain, learning and memory

Friday, January 16th, 2009

A gene called DREAM, earlier known to regulate the perception of pain, has now been found to control learning and memory as well.

In a 2002 study on mice, scientists found that DREAM controlled all kinds of pain, whether chronic or acute and thus it was dubbed as the “Master-Gene of pain perception”.

However, Josef Penninger, meanwhile scientific director of IMBA, the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, wanted to find out other functions of DREAM.

Thus, Penninger, in collaboration with neurobiologists from the University Pablo de Olivade, devised experiments to follow up on the previous findings.

For the study, the researchers subjected DREAM-less mice to numerous neurological tests and analysed their memory skills.

And the findings were quite were striking-without DREAM, the mice were able to learn faster and remember better.

In fact, the brains of aged mice (18 months) showed learning capabilities similar to those of very young mice, thus making DREAM a potential genetic candidate for explaining old age dementia.

In fact, DREAM could also have its roots in regulating Alzheimer’s disease as the characteristic accumulation of amyloid plaques in brain cells during Alzheimer’s is believed to be caused by Calcium-imbalance, which is also responsible for tuning the activity of the DREAM-gene.

Calcium homeostasis may thus be the link between pain perception, learning and memory.

The conclusion is supported by observations of patients suffering from chronic pain- very often their ability to memorize is strikingly reduced and they need a lot more time to learn than individuals without pain.

“It is absolutely fascinating that we found a gene which at the same time regulates pain, learning and old age memory function, and it is of great interest to the millions of people suffering from chronic pain that we follow up on these results,” said Josef Penninger.

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Benefits of Having a Slot Machine

Friday, January 16th, 2009

There are a number of benefits to having a slot machine around. Your home or your recreational area could benefit greatly from this colorful decoration. They don’t require a lot of upkeep and they are just great for providing a fun atmosphere. If you are really interested in separating yourself from the standard, then this is one good way to create a unique theme. All you have to do is look for a dealer specializing in slot machine sales and you will be ready to go.

The main reason to get one is the obvious fun factor. Even if it isn’t rigged up for gambling, you will have a lot of fun playing with the machine. It’s a great social item and a fun distraction. If you want to have a truly unique social experience, then having a slot machine will help. The decorative aspect is important too though. Having a slot machine around can establish a great theme for the room. You could choose to go with a fun, party atmosphere or a classic cool with one of the older models.

Either way, you don’t have to worry too much about the purchase. If you think that you want one, then you can start looking around at a number of reputable suppliers that offer used and new slot machine sales. I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you need.

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Fibre-optic probe made for space program may revolutionise cataract detection

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

A compact fibre-optic probe developed in America for the space program has now shown some promise to detect cataract early, something that can significantly reduce the incidence of vision loss.

Researchers from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, joined hands with their colleagues from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop the simple, safe eye test for measuring a protein related to cataract formation.

The researchers say that helping people know about subtle protein changes before a cataract develops may encourage them to reduce their risk of contracting the condition by making simple lifestyle changes, such as decreasing sun exposure, quitting smoking, stopping certain medications and controlling diabetes.

“By the time the eye’’s lens appears cloudy from a cataract, it is too late to reverse or medically treat this process. This technology can detect the earliest damage to lens proteins, triggering an early warning for cataract formation and blindness,” said Manuel B. Datiles III, M.D., NEI medical officer and lead author of the clinical study.

According to the researchers, the novel device is based on a laser light technique called dynamic light scattering (DLS). It was initially developed to analyse the growth of protein crystals in a zero-gravity space environment, they reveal.

NASA’’s Rafat R. Ansari, a senior scientist at the John H. Glenn Research Center and co-author of the study, is the man who brought it to the attention of NEI vision researchers that the technology could possibly have clinical applications too.

He conceived that idea after learning that his own father’s cataracts were caused by changes in lens proteins.

Several proteins are involved in cataract formation, but one known as alpha-crystallin serves as the eye’’s own anti-cataract molecule. Alpha-crystallin binds to other proteins when they become damaged, thus preventing them from bunching together to form a cataract.

However, humans are born with a fixed amount of alpha-crystallin, and therefore a depleted supply cause by radiation exposure, smoking, diabetes or other causes can result in a cataract.

“We have shown that this non-invasive technology that was developed for the space program can now be used to look at the early signs of protein damage due to oxidative stress, a key process involved in many medical conditions, including age-related cataract and diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’’s and Parkinson’’s,” said NASA’’s Dr. Ansari.

“By understanding the role of protein changes in cataract formation, we can use the lens not just to look at eye disease, but also as a window into the whole body,” the researcher added.

The recent NEI-NASA clinical trial looked at 380 eyes of people, aged 7 to 86, who had lenses ranging from clear to severe cloudiness from cataract. The researchers used the DLS device to shine a low-power laser light through the lenses.

The team had already determined alpha-crystallin’’s light-scattering ability, which was then used to detect and measure the amount of alpha-crystallin in the lenses.

They observed that as cloudiness increased, alpha-crystallin in the lenses decreased.

According to the researchers, alpha-crystallin amounts also decreased as the participants” ages increased, even when the lenses were still transparent, and that such age-related pre-cataract changes would remain undetected by currently available imaging tools.

“This research is a prime example of two government agencies sharing scientific information for the benefit of the American people. At an individual level, this device could be used to study the effectiveness of anti-cataract therapies or the tendency of certain medications to cause cataract formation,” said NEI director Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D.

The researchers reckon that the DLS technique may be helpful in looking at long-term lens changes due to aging, smoking, diabetes, LASIK surgery, eye drops for treating glaucoma, and surgical removal of the vitreous gel within the eye, a procedure known to cause cataracts within six months to one year.

They say that this approach may also be helpful in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’’s disease, in which an abnormal protein may be found in the lens.

Meanwhile, NASA will continue using the device to look at the impact of long-term space travel on the visual system.

“During a three year mission to Mars, astronauts will experience increased exposure to space radiation that can cause cataracts and other problems. In the absence of proper countermeasures, this may pose a risk for NASA. This technology could help us understand the mechanism for cataract formation so we can work to develop effective countermeasures to mitigate the risk and prevent it in astronauts,” Dr. Ansari said.

A research article describing the study has been published in the Archives of Ophthalmology.

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Top Army recruiter weighs fat camp for recruits

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

The Army has been dismissing so many overweight applicants that its top recruiter, trying to keep troop numbers up in wartime, is considering starting a fat farm to transform chubby trainees into svelte soldiers.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, head of the Army Recruiting Command, said he wants to see a formal diet and fitness regimen running alongside a new school at Fort Jackson that helps aspiring troops earn their GEDs.

Bostick told The Associated Press that obesity looms as “a bigger challenge for us in the years ahead” than any other problem that keeps young people from entering the military, including lack of a GED or high school diploma, misconduct or criminal behavior and other health issues such as eye or ear problems.

According to Defense Department figures provided to the AP, over the past four years 47,447 potential recruits flunked induction physicals at the nation’s 35 Military Entrance Processing Stations because they were overweight.

That is a fraction of the 205,902 such exams given in 2005 and 250,764 in 2008, but still amounts to a hefty number and comes at a time when the military is more interested than ever in recruits. The Army and Marine Corps together paid more than $600 million over the past year in bonuses and other financial incentives to attract volunteers.

While the services have reported exceeding their recruiting goals in the past year, the Pentagon remains under pressure to find a constant flow of recruits. The Defense Department has announced plans to boost the active duty Army by 65,000 to a total of 547,000 soldiers by next year, and grow the Marines from 175,000 to 202,000 by 2011.

Obesity afflicts recruits for other physically demanding jobs, including firefighters. Deputy Chief Ed Nied, chair of the safety, health and survival section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said fire departments are also making a “major push” to encourage better fitness among young people who want to join.

“We draw from the same exact population that they (the military) draw from,” Nied said from his Tucson, Ariz., headquarters. “This comes from a lack of physical education in the high schools.”

In an interview during a visit to the Army’s largest training installation, Bostick said a slim-down camp could be part of the new Army Prep School at Fort Jackson, S.C. The school opened in August, and gives recruits who didn’t graduate from high school the chance to earn a GED before starting their nine weeks of basic training.

“We are looking at the Army Prep School as a place where we might send some (recruits) that have weight issues,” the two-star general said.

The prep school is housed in several one- and two-story buildings on a small part of this sprawling training installation. The classrooms and living quarters are Spartan. GED candidates wear Army uniforms, exercise before breakfast and study under the guidance of enlisted officers. They do not mix or conduct weapons training with soldiers participating in the nine weeks of basic training maneuvers elsewhere on the fort.

Bostick argues that many of the young people who want to join the Army have a hard time understanding a healthy diet and the importance of daily exercise, but could get within the military limits with guidance.

“It took them 18 years to get to where they are at, so it’s very difficult for them to lose the kind of weight that they need to on their own,” said Bostick, who did not provide any timing for when his idea might reach fruition, nor any projection of its potential cost.

Lawrence J. Korb, a former Pentagon chief of personnel during the Reagan administration, said the Army has to fight even harder than the other service branches to get the recruits they need.

“The Army has a tough time recruiting as compared to the other services,” said Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. He said the burden for fighting an unpopular war in Iraq has fallen primarily on the military’s largest service.

“They are doing this because they are desperate,” Korb said.

Recruiters echo Bostick’s worries about weight issues among potential candidates for the military.

“I’d say that out of every 10 applicants that come in, probably three we couldn’t take — they are obese,” said Sgt. Darryl Bogan, a recruiter in Columbia. An additional 20 percent to 30 percent of recruits are slightly overweight, but some can get the weight off, Bogan said.

“We are getting heavier as a nation as far as our young people are concerned,” Bogan said.

Besides basic weight and height guidelines, Bogan said the Army uses body fat percentages and an aerobics test to determine whether recruits can withstand the rigors of basic training. Recruits must step up and down on a riser at a certain rate per minute, then perform some push-ups and sit-ups and have their heart rates measured.

One of Bogan’s recruits, 18-year-old Idalia Halley, was shocked when she found she was a few pounds too heavy to enter boot camp.

“My mom was like, ‘You better come run with me,’” Halley recalled, saying it took several weeks of healthy eating and runs with her Army-veteran mom to finally get into the service.

On her second try, Halley said she weighed in at 162 pounds and logged a 30 percent rate of body fat to meet the Army’s standard.

Toting her M-16 during weapons exercises in basic training, Halley said she’d slimmed down even more in the first weeks of training.

“I know I’ve lost some weight because I have to pull my pants up tighter,” the Army private said. “And besides, I don’t think the food’s all that great — except breakfast.”

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