Pope Benedict XVI walks away after addressing the crowd from the window of the Pope's summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the scenic town where he will spend his first post-Vatican days and make his last public blessing as pope,Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Benedict XVI walks away after addressing the crowd from the window of the Pope's summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the scenic town where he will spend his first post-Vatican days and make his last public blessing as pope,Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Benedict XVI leaves after greeting the faithful from the balcony window of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the scenic town where he will spend his first post-Vatican days and made his last public blessing as pope,Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Benedict XVI waves from the balcony window of the Pontifical summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, some 35 kilometers south of Rome, to a cheering crowd gathered to see him the day he ends his pontificate, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
Members of the public and the media wait for Vatican Swiss guards to close the main door of the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Benedict XVI greeted the faithful for the last time as pope on Thursday, telling tearful well-wishers that he is beginning the final stage of his life as "simply a pilgrim," hours before he becomes the first pontiff in 600 years to resign. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
A helicopter with Pope Benedict XVI onboard leaves the Vatican in Rome, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. The 85-year-old German Pope Benedict is stepping down on Thursday evening, the first pope to do so in 600 years, after saying he no longer has the mental or physical strength to vigorously lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff in 600 years to resign, has left Vatican City for scenic Castel Gandolfo in the hills south of Rome, where he has spent his summer vacations reading and writing. To a roaring cheer, Benedict appeared at the balcony of the palazzo and said he was happy to be "surrounded by the beauty of creation."
Here is a look at photos of Benedict's final moments as leader and the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The weakest quarter for the U.S. economy in nearly two years may end up being a temporary lull. Economists think growth has begun to pick up on the strength of a sustained housing recovery and a better job market.
The economy grew at an annual rate of just 0.1 percent from October from December, a government report Thursday showed. That's only slightly better than the Commerce Department's previous estimate that the economy shrank at a rate of 0.1 percent. And it's down from the 3.1 percent annual growth rate in the July-September quarter.
Economists said the weakness last quarter was caused by steep defense cuts and slower company restocking, which are volatile. Residential construction, consumer spending and business investment ? core drivers of growth ? all improved. Steady job growth will likely keep consumers spending, despite higher Social Security taxes that have cut into take-home pay.
Analysts think growth is picking up in the January-March quarter to a roughly 2 percent annual rate. The only impediment may be the across-the-board government spending cuts that kick in Friday ? especially if those cuts remain in place for months.
"I continue to have some optimism about the economy despite the efforts of Washington to kill it, because the labor market continues to improve," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisers
The latest indication of the job market's strength came Thursday in a government report that the number of Americans seeking weekly unemployment benefits fell 22,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 344,000.
Applications for unemployment have fallen steadily in recent months. The four-week average has declined nearly 11 percent since November. At the same time, employers added an average of 200,000 jobs a month from November through January. That was up from about 150,000 in the previous three months.
Naroff thinks the economy could grow at an annual rate of around 2 percent in the first quarter of 2013 and an even better rate of 4 percent in the April-June quarter. But he and other economists warn that lawmakers will slow growth if they fail to reach a budget agreement indefinitely. If the spending cuts last two weeks or longer, Naroff said they could shave a half-percentage point off first-quarter growth and a full percentage point off second-quarter growth.
Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, predicts growth could be as high as 2 percent in the current quarter. Alan Levenson, chief economist for T. Rowe Price, said growth could be as high as 2.5 percent.
Ashworth noted that a sharp decline in defense spending and slower business restocking subtracted 2.9 percentage points from growth in the fourth quarter. At the same time, consumer spending and business investment ? two key drivers of growth ? accelerated at the end of last year.
"We still believe that the fourth-quarter GDP figures were a lot better than the headline stagnation suggests," said Ashworth.
More jobs and ultra-low mortgage rates are helping the once-battered housing market recover. New-home sales jumped 16 percent to their highest level in 4? years in January.
At the same time, the number of new homes available for sale remains near record lows. That means builders will likely have to start construction on more homes and apartments to keep up with demand. That should create more construction jobs.
Home prices also rose in December compared with the same month a year ago by the most in more than six years. Rising home values contribute to the housing recovery and the broader economy. They encourage more people to buy before prices rise further. Higher prices also build homeowners' wealth, which can spur more spending and economic growth.
Businesses and consumers are also showing greater confidence despite automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect on Friday. A measure of consumer confidence rebounded in February after a sharp fall the previous month that likely was a result of the tax increase.
Companies, meanwhile, sharply increased orders in January for a category of long-lasting manufactured goods that reflect their investment plans. That suggests they are confident about their business prospects.
Mind meld rats: Researchers have demonstrated that electrical signals generated in the brain of one rat can be decoded by the brain of another, in an experiment involving rodents that are thousands of miles apart.
By Sharon Begley,?Reuters / February 28, 2013
A genomics researcher holds a lab rat in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2008. Scientists have recently connected the brains of rats in Brazil to those in the United States, creating a rodent 'brain net.'
Andre Penner/AP/File
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The scientists call it a "brain link," and it is the closest anyone has gotten to a real-life "mind meld": the thoughts of a rat romping around a lab in Brazil were captured by electronic sensors and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States.
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The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
Adding to its science-fiction feel, the advance in direct brain-to-brain communication could lay the foundation for what Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, calls an "organic computer" in which multiple brains are linked to solve problems solo brains can't.
If that sounds like an ethical minefield, several experts think so too, especially since Nicolelis is now working on brain-to-brain communication between monkeys.
"Having non-human primates communicate brain-to-brain raises all sorts of ethical concerns," said one neuroscientist, who studies how brains handle motor and sensory information, but who asked not to be named. "Reading about putting things in animals' brains and changing what they do, people rightly get nervous," envisioning battalions of animal soldiers - or even human soldiers - whose brains are remotely controlled by others.
That could make drone warfare seem as advanced as muskets.
Nicolelis's lab received $26 million from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for work on brain-machine interfaces, as this field is called.
The linked rat brains in the study built on 15 years of research in brain-machine interfaces. These interfaces take electrical signals generated from the brains of severely-paralyzed people and translate them into commands that move a mechanical arm, a computer cursor or even the patient's own arm.
Such work led Nicolelis to ask, can one brain decode the electrical signals generated by another?
The answer - at least for rats - was yes.
Coded signals
In one experiment, the Duke researchers trained rats destined to be message senders, or encoders, to press a lever when a red light above them turned on. Doing so earned the animals a sip of water. Rats intended to be message receivers, or decoders, were trained to press a lever when the scientists electrically stimulated their brains via implants.
The scientists next connected the rats' brains directly, inserting microelectrodes roughly one-hundredth the width of a human hair. Now when an encoding rat saw the red light and pressed the lever, its brain activity sped directly into the brains of seven decoder rats.
The decoders did not see a red light. Nevertheless, they usually pressed the correct lever and earned their after-work libation. The encoder rats got the same treat, reaping the rewards of their partners' success.
The encoder rat did not get that reward if a decoder rat goofed. In that case, the encoder rat, apparently realizing what had happened, seemed to concentrate harder on its task: it decided more quickly to choose the correct lever and quashed extraneous thoughts so as not to muddy the signal with, perhaps, daydreams about escaping the lab or pressing the wrong lever.
As a result, the signal got louder and sharper, and the decoder rats made fewer mistakes.
"The encoder basically changed its brain function to make the signal cleaner and easier for its partner to get it right," Nicolelis said.
Videos of the experiments are available at www.nicolelislab.net, and the paper is at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01319
The researchers also trained pairs of rats to distinguish a narrow opening from a wide one using their whiskers. The animals learned to poke a water port on the left side of the chamber with their nose if they sensed a narrow opening, and a port on the right if they sensed a wide opening.
As with the lever press, when the brain waves that signified "narrow door" traveled from the encoder rat to the decoder rat, the latter usually poked the correct port.
In these experiments, the rats were in Nicolelis's lab at Duke and their brains were connected by long, thin wires. To show the reach of brain waves, the scientists re-ran the experiments with encoder rats in Natal, Brazil, and decoder rats at Duke. The brain signals traveled over the Internet. But even with the resulting noise, the mind melds usually succeeded.
'Complete fantasy'
Some other researchers were not impressed. For one thing, the Internet aspect is not novel: in a previous study, electrical activity in the brain of a monkey at Duke was sent via the Internet and controlled a robot arm in Japan.
Neurobiologist Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh, a leader in the field of brain-computer interactions, said that "from a scientific/engineering point of view, this is of limited interest." Brain-machine interfaces "have moved far beyond this."
"It's cool that the stimulus came from another brain" rather than an electrical device, agreed bioengineer Douglas Weber of Pittsburgh. But "many labs have shown that animals can detect electrical stimuli delivered to the brain. This paper simply shows that the animals can detect electrical stimuli... from another rat's brain. There is nothing unexpected or surprising."
The Duke team sees the study as a step toward what lead author Miguel Pais-Vieira calls "a workable network of animal brains." They are currently trying to link four rats' brains and (separately) two monkeys' brains, each in what Nicolelis calls a "brain-net."
"Wiring brains together to accomplish something useful strikes me as a fantasy," said neuroscientist Lee Miller of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, whose brain-machine research is intended to help paralyzed patients move.
Asked how likely it is that one day human brains would be linked, Nicolelis said: "I wouldn't mind if, 100 years from now, people say two rats started human brain nets."
(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Claudia Parsons)
NSF collaborates with federal partners to plan for comprehensive public access to research resultsPublic release date: 22-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Deborah Wing dwing@nsf.gov 703-292-5344 National Science Foundation
Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with federal partners, announced its commitment to expand public access to the results of its funded research. Public access is intended to accelerate the dissemination of fundamental research results that will advance the frontiers of knowledge and help ensure the nation's future prosperity.
This announcement follows a memorandum issued from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directing science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally funded research and improve the management of digital data produced through such research.
"Scientific progress depends on the responsible communication of research findings, and NSF has been engaged in efforts to expand public access for several years," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "Full public access will require changes in policies, procedures and practices from the many stakeholders who participate in NSF's broad research portfolio spanning all scientific and engineering disciplines. We stand with our federal science colleagues, as well as our non-governmental partners, to collaborate in accomplishing this transition on behalf of science and our nation's future."
"The logic behind enhanced public access is plain. We know that scientific research supported by the federal government spurs scientific breakthroughs and economic advances when research results are made available to innovators," said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John P. Holdren. "Policies that mobilize these intellectual assets for re-use through broader access can accelerate scientific breakthroughs, increase innovation, and promote economic growth."
"The National Science Board, as the policy making body for the National Science Foundation, endorses the agency's commitment to public access and looks forward to working with its colleagues and stakeholder communities to support and broaden the availability of federally-funded research data and results," said National Science Board (NSB) Chairman Dan Arvizu. "The NSB understands the importance to the American people that public access brings to the taxpayer and the scholarly community, and that progress in science accelerates when researchers share and build on each other's results."
Quotes from federal partners:
"Collaboration, transparency and open access to scientific findings accelerate discovery and innovation," said Director of DOE's Office of Science Bill Brinkman. "The Department of Energy has been working for years with our colleagues in other science agencies and our stakeholders to advance open access. So we fully support the goals of the OSTP memorandum and will work quickly to develop and implement policies and procedures so that peer-reviewed journal articles funded by the Office of Science are available to the public."
"Publicly funded agricultural research is essential to finding the solutions needed to meet the challenges of providing food, fiber and fuel to an increasing global population, and improved access to these publicly funded research findings enhances our efforts," said Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics at U.S. Department Agriculture, Catherine Woteki. "USDA already makes much of its research available and transparent today, and we look forward to working with the wide range of scientists in the many disciplines and institutions that contribute to our work, to make these policies effective and beneficial to all."
"NASA welcomes this initiative to promote broader dissemination of our research results," said Marc S. Allen, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator for Research at NASA. "We already make data from our space missions available in the public domain, so it's a natural next step to make the exciting scientific results obtained from these data as available as possible to organizations and the public at large."
"Innovation in our country is driven by scientific discovery," said Under Secretary for Standards and Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Pat Gallagher. "By making federal scientific research more broadly available we will help stimulate future innovation and economic growth."
NSF Implementation:
With the breadth of NSF and other federal support across the scientific community, the implementation details for public access could vary by discipline, and new business models for universities, libraries, publishers, and scholarly and professional societies could emerge. Those details will emerge as NSF consults with its stakeholders and with other government agencies, and as it develops its plans. NSF has already laid out a tentative timeline for consultation, planning, systems development, and changes to its policies, which will be fine-tuned over the coming months.
"We expect our approach to evolve over time," said Suresh. "This transition will result in innovative, cost-effective and sustainable approaches. With science becoming an increasingly global enterprise, we will also work with international science funding agencies through forums such as the Global Research Council to enable public access across borders."
###
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NSF collaborates with federal partners to plan for comprehensive public access to research resultsPublic release date: 22-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Deborah Wing dwing@nsf.gov 703-292-5344 National Science Foundation
Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with federal partners, announced its commitment to expand public access to the results of its funded research. Public access is intended to accelerate the dissemination of fundamental research results that will advance the frontiers of knowledge and help ensure the nation's future prosperity.
This announcement follows a memorandum issued from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directing science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally funded research and improve the management of digital data produced through such research.
"Scientific progress depends on the responsible communication of research findings, and NSF has been engaged in efforts to expand public access for several years," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "Full public access will require changes in policies, procedures and practices from the many stakeholders who participate in NSF's broad research portfolio spanning all scientific and engineering disciplines. We stand with our federal science colleagues, as well as our non-governmental partners, to collaborate in accomplishing this transition on behalf of science and our nation's future."
"The logic behind enhanced public access is plain. We know that scientific research supported by the federal government spurs scientific breakthroughs and economic advances when research results are made available to innovators," said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John P. Holdren. "Policies that mobilize these intellectual assets for re-use through broader access can accelerate scientific breakthroughs, increase innovation, and promote economic growth."
"The National Science Board, as the policy making body for the National Science Foundation, endorses the agency's commitment to public access and looks forward to working with its colleagues and stakeholder communities to support and broaden the availability of federally-funded research data and results," said National Science Board (NSB) Chairman Dan Arvizu. "The NSB understands the importance to the American people that public access brings to the taxpayer and the scholarly community, and that progress in science accelerates when researchers share and build on each other's results."
Quotes from federal partners:
"Collaboration, transparency and open access to scientific findings accelerate discovery and innovation," said Director of DOE's Office of Science Bill Brinkman. "The Department of Energy has been working for years with our colleagues in other science agencies and our stakeholders to advance open access. So we fully support the goals of the OSTP memorandum and will work quickly to develop and implement policies and procedures so that peer-reviewed journal articles funded by the Office of Science are available to the public."
"Publicly funded agricultural research is essential to finding the solutions needed to meet the challenges of providing food, fiber and fuel to an increasing global population, and improved access to these publicly funded research findings enhances our efforts," said Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics at U.S. Department Agriculture, Catherine Woteki. "USDA already makes much of its research available and transparent today, and we look forward to working with the wide range of scientists in the many disciplines and institutions that contribute to our work, to make these policies effective and beneficial to all."
"NASA welcomes this initiative to promote broader dissemination of our research results," said Marc S. Allen, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator for Research at NASA. "We already make data from our space missions available in the public domain, so it's a natural next step to make the exciting scientific results obtained from these data as available as possible to organizations and the public at large."
"Innovation in our country is driven by scientific discovery," said Under Secretary for Standards and Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Pat Gallagher. "By making federal scientific research more broadly available we will help stimulate future innovation and economic growth."
NSF Implementation:
With the breadth of NSF and other federal support across the scientific community, the implementation details for public access could vary by discipline, and new business models for universities, libraries, publishers, and scholarly and professional societies could emerge. Those details will emerge as NSF consults with its stakeholders and with other government agencies, and as it develops its plans. NSF has already laid out a tentative timeline for consultation, planning, systems development, and changes to its policies, which will be fine-tuned over the coming months.
"We expect our approach to evolve over time," said Suresh. "This transition will result in innovative, cost-effective and sustainable approaches. With science becoming an increasingly global enterprise, we will also work with international science funding agencies through forums such as the Global Research Council to enable public access across borders."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (AP) ? The company that measures television viewership said Thursday it will soon begin counting people who watch programming through broadband in addition to the traditional broadcast or cable hook-up.
Nielsen's move is a significant step toward recognizing a world where the definition of TV viewing is swiftly changing and toward satisfying clients concerned that the company isn't keeping up with those changes. Separately, Nielsen is developing ways to track content on tablets and mobile phones.
For many years, roughly 99 percent of homes in the U.S. had televisions that received service through broadcast, cable or satellite signals.
Now the number of homes without such service is 4.2 percent ? and growing each year. About three-quarters of those homes still have TVs, however, and their owners watch programming through game consoles or services like Netflix and Amazon. Starting September, Nielsen will have meters that can monitor viewership in those homes, said Brian Fuhrer, a senior vice president at Nielsen.
This will add roughly 160 homes to Nielsen's current sample of 23,000 houses nationwide with meters monitoring viewing habits.
More significantly, Nielsen will return to its sample to find homes that have cable or broadcast, but also separate TV sets hooked up through broadband. This will add an estimated 2,000 more broadband sets, significantly increasing the sample size, Fuhrer said.
"Consumers are accessing content in new ways that fall outside of our traditional definitions and if we don't expand ... we could be missing an emerging trend," he said.
Under Nielsen's old definition, there are an estimated 5 million homes in the U.S. without working TV sets, up a total of 3 million from 2007. Nielsen and the industry studied this to see whether people were pulling their plugs because of the recession; instead, the bulk of the new "non-TV homes" were simply watching TV in a different way.
The changes aren't likely to quickly boost the ratings of your favorite program, however. Most of the programs shown through broadband don't have the same encodings as shows watched traditionally, primarily because they often have different advertisements. As a result, Nielsen will be limited in tracking what particular shows are being watched, at least until more universal encoding standards are developed.
Some broadband services have the ability to measure how much individual programs are seen but keep that information private. It is why, for example, there have been no estimates of how many people have seen Netflix's well-reviewed new series "House of Cards."
Even without those specifics, Nielsen will still be able to collect information such as who in the household is watching through broadband, and how much they watch. That is data that will at least be valuable to advertisers and marketers trying to target specific consumer groups. Nielsen's change was first reported in The Hollywood Reporter.
When the industry will be able to see how much people are watching through broadband, it will increase the pressure for universal encoding ? networks and advertising agencies will want to know what those new viewers are watching, said David Poltrack, chief research executive at CBS.
If, as expected, broadband viewing continues to increase, Nielsen's change at least ensures that this won't be ignored, Poltrack said.
"All of these things are designed to keep them ahead of the game," he said.
Brad Adgate, top researcher for Horizon Media, noted that several networks have seen the median age of their viewers increase significantly over the past few years. In the way television does business, older viewers are less valuable to advertisers. Presumably, younger viewers are more likely to be watching through broadband ? and many had dropped off Nielsen's radar, he said.
Nielsen must also develop a separate metering system for tablets and mobile devices, and Fuhrer said that work is ongoing.
Feb. 20, 2013 ? As the nations of the world prepare to vote on measures to restrict international trade in endangered sharks in early March, a team of researchers has found that one of these species -- the oceanic whitetip shark -- regularly crosses international boundaries. Efforts by individual nations to protect this declining apex predator within their own maritime borders may therefore need to be nested within broader international conservation measures.
The research team, which included researchers from Microwave Telemetry, Inc., the Cape Eleuthera Institute, and the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, attached pop-up satellite archival tags to one male and 10 female mature oceanic whitetip sharks off Cat Island in The Bahamas in May 2011, and monitored the sharks for varying intervals up to 245 days. The tags recorded depth, temperature, and location for pre-programmed periods of time. At the end of the time period, the tags self-detached from the sharks, and reported the data to orbiting satellites.
Their findings, published online February 20 in the journal PLOS ONE, show that some of these sharks roamed nearly 2,000 kilometers from the spot where they were caught, but all individuals returned to The Bahamas within a few months.
"While the oceanic whitetip shark is one of the most severely overexploited shark species, it is also among the least studied because it lives much of its life far from land in the open ocean," said Lucy Howey-Jordan, scientific liaison for Microwave Telemetry, Inc. and lead author. "Before this study and our ongoing research, very few of these sharks had been fitted with satellite tags, and the data we obtained will help establish new conservation measures."
All the tags, except the one attached to the male shark, reported data. Of the eight tagged oceanic whitetip sharks tracked for more than 31 days, three stayed within or very near The Bahamas Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for their entire tracking period. The other five sharks, after an approximate 30-day period of residency within 500 kilometers of the tagging area, made long-distance movements outside of the EEZ, with one traveling as far as Bermuda. The fact that all these tagged mature female sharks returned to The Bahamas provides the first evidence of return-migration in this species. Additional findings that were surprising to the scientists included the sharks spending an average of 68 percent of the monitored time in Bahamian waters, and that these sharks, normally found near the ocean's surface, made dives of approximately 1,000 meters, possibly related to feeding behavior.
"Although these sharks are relatively safe from fishing in Bahamian waters, our study shows their long-range roaming takes them across the boundaries of different countries and into the high seas where they still encounter fishing gear set for other species," said Dr. Demian Chapman, an assistant professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and assistant director of science at the Institute for Ocean Conservation at Stony Brook University. "If we want to continue to see these animals in our oceans, fishing nations will have to work together to protect this species, and monitoring of trade and enforcement measures will need to be coordinated on an international level."
Once considered among the most abundant apex predators on Earth, overfishing has caused huge declines in oceanic whitetip sharks, and the species is listed as "Critically Endangered" in the Northwest Atlantic and Western Central Atlantic, and "Vulnerable" globally by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The fins of these sharks can be sold for $90 per kilogram because of the high demand for their use in shark fin soup, a delicacy in Chinese culture. There is growing international interest in improving the conservation of these sharks, including a proposal to list this species in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which will be considered at its upcoming Conference of Parties meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, March 3-14 of this year.
World renowned for its healthy shark populations and proactive conservation stance, The Bahamas is one of the few places left in the world where this open-ocean species can be found in relatively large numbers. In July 2011, during the timeframe of this study, The Bahamas banned all commercial fishing of sharks throughout the 630,000 square kilometers of surrounding ocean waters. The sharks now benefit from this protection, and the shark diving industry, a major contributor to the Bahamian economy, benefits from their presence in surrounding waters. Additionally, recent studies have shown ecosystem health is dependant, in part, on the presence of apex predators like sharks.
"The Bahamian government had the foresight to protect these and other species of sharks within their waters, starting with the longline fishing ban in early 90s, and culminating with the more recent shark sanctuary initiative," said Edd Brooks, program manager of the Shark Research and Conservation Program at the Cape Eleuthera Institute. "This level of protection is vital for the continued existence of these important apex predators, and I hope that the example set by The Bahamas will encourage other nations to follow suit."
This research was funded by Microwave Telemetry, Inc., the Cape Eleuthera Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Roe Foundation.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stony Brook University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Lucy A. Howey-Jordan, Edward J. Brooks, Debra L. Abercrombie, Lance K. B. Jordan, Annabelle Brooks, Sean Williams, Emily Gospodarczyk, Demian D. Chapman. Complex Movements, Philopatry and Expanded Depth Range of a Severely Threatened Pelagic Shark, the Oceanic Whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus) in the Western North Atlantic. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e56588 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056588
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) ? The judge presiding over the Sept. 11 war crimes tribunal is allowing defense lawyers their first chance to see the secret section of the Guantanamo Bay prison where the accused are held.
Army Col. James Pohl granted the defense teams less access to Camp 7 than requested. Lawyers for the five prisoners facing a military tribunal for their roles in the Sept. 11 attacks wanted to spend 48 hours inside the camp. They also wanted multiple visits.
Pohl ruled that three members of each team can visit once, for no more than 12 continuous hours.
He barred them from interviewing guards.
Attorney James Connell called Wednesday's ruling a good start. Camp 7 is so shrouded in secrecy that even its location on the U.S. base in Cuba is classified.
When you apply for this position, please say you saw this job on Green Dream Jobs!!
Founded in 1831 as Alabama's first public college, The University of Alabama is dedicated to excellence in teaching, research and service. We provide a creative, nurturing campus environment where our students can become the best individuals possible, can learn from the best and brightest faculty, and can make a positive difference in the community, the state and the world.
The University of Alabama family has always expected great things. After all, we are our state's flagship university - the Capstone of higher education.
The College of Engineering is experiencing unparalleled growth and prosperity, and is in the process of constructing several new engineering buildings. The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is a leading contributor to this success with unprecedented growth in its undergraduate, graduate, and research programs.
The Department offers an ABET-accredited BS degree, an MS degree, and the PhD degree in Chemical Engineering. With a current enrollment of over 600 undergraduate and graduate students, it is one of the largest Departments in the College of Engineering. Additional information on the Department and be found at our?website.
Position Overview:
The University of Alabama Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering invites applications for two new faculty positions in the emphasis area of environmental and water resources engineering. These positions are part of a focused investment by the College of Engineering in the broad area of environmental research.?
Responsibilities:?
We are seeking candidates who will:?
Partner with other environmental faculty.
Develop nationally competitive research programs that will complement the current environmental research in the department and the EI.
Build bridges with interdisciplinary colleagues in UA's biological sciences, chemistry, and other engineering departments.
Have a balanced perspective on research and instruction.
Teach at both graduate and undergraduate levels.
Hold a doctoral degree in chemical engineering or a closely related field. ??
Qualifications:?
Applicants must hold a doctoral degree in chemical engineering or a closely related field.?
Additional Information:?
Successful candidates will have the opportunity to participate in the?University's Environmental Institute?(EI). The EI's primary mission is to be a national leader in research on environmental issues related to water, air, and land resources, and involves a dynamic and collegial group of faculty from multiple departments across the University, including Chemical and Biological Engineering, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Geology, and Biology.
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King.com, an online gaming company that is rivaling Zynga in terms of popularity on Facebook, has announced that it is bringing two of its most popular platform games to Japan and Korea. With this move, Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga will now be localized on Facebook for each region. The company says that suitable versions for mobile iOS and Google Play versions will be available shortly.
While King.com has offices in London, Stockholm, Barcelona, Bucharest, Hamburg, and other cities in Europe, and also in San Francisco, the Japanese and Korean move would be the first time the country has forayed into Asia. Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder and CEO of King.com, mentions that his company had been looking towards Asian markets for some time now and feel the the time is right to move beyond the US shores.
As it turns out, in Hong Kong alone, there are more than 1 million daily players enjoying Candy Crush Saga ? that?s almost 1/7th of the region?s population. Using this and perhaps other key metrics, one could presume that this is why the company has chosen to expand its reach to Korean and Japanese markets.
Alex Dale, King.com?s Chief Marketing Officer, tells us that Candy Crush Saga has exceeded all expectations and is now the top overall application on Facebook by not only monthly, but daily active users ? some estimates place the game at 15 million DAU and 43 million MAU. Having arrived on mobile devices last fall, the company says the game is seeing over 55 million daily gameplays across iOS and Android devices.
What?s more, the game has toppled Windows Live Messenger for the #1 spot as popular Facebook app. The growth is remarkable ? it was only last month when the application metrics and trend service company AppData said Candy Crush Saga became the most popular game on Facebook.
Dale says that the company?s 9 billion monthly gameplays is impressive and looks to keep growing as the company offers its games in more languages and regions like Japan and Korea. Today, King.com has developed games in 12 languages and has customers in 160 countries around the world.
Sony is reportedly going to release the Android 4.2.2 update for Xperia Z smartphone by the end of March in Europe, claims Xperia Blog. The blog claims that a tipster has given them this information along with the following screenshot from an Xperia Z phone running on test build of the same software.
Sony Xperia Z has just started retailing in the first European markets like France and it would have reached most important markets in the continent by the first week of March. So providing the latest Android version update soon after the market availability indeed seems like a great move from the company.
There is no word on the exact availability or whether this update will bring anything else apart from Android 4.2.2 changes. We are actively tracking the story and will let you know if anything new pops up.
According to the Mobile Marketing Association it is ?a set of practices that enable organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network?.
Mobile marketers like to define it as businesses communicating with consumers on their mobile phones with their explicit permission at the right time, at the right place while providing relevant value. ?
Mobile marketing is comprised of:
text message marketing/SMS marketing; this is essentially the same as email marketing and allows you to deliver a targeted message in a simple, instant and relevant manner. You must be very focused on your message with approximately 100 characters (varies from Canada to the US).
mobile coupons
vCards (mobile business cards); this gives you the ability to include all your contact information including photo, click to call, click to email, Social Media links and download directly into your phone rather than the tedious task of typing into your phone where the chance of error is greater. It is very difficult to include all your information on a business card due to its size, however, a qr code with all your information is perfect.
QR codes (Quick Response Codes); the most misused marketing tool which has the ability to be one of the most powerful tools, if used correctly. For the first time, with the use of QR codes, print material becomes an interactive experience bridging offline with online.
mobile landing pages
mobile websites; desktop websites were not designed from smartphones and without mobile optimizing your website, users are becoming frustrated. Click to call, thumb friendly, and quick and easy access to relevant information without pinching and zooming will ensure a pleasant consumer experience.
mobile apps.
Did you know?
There are more cellphone subscribers than people that own toothbrushes!
The number of cellphone subscriptions continues to grow and has reached 6 billion according to The International Telecommunications Union (2011). This is equivalent to 87% of the world?s population!
Only 35% of the global population uses the internet.
As a business owner, would you rather target your marketing to the 2.3 billion using the internet or the 6 billion using cellphones? I am not suggesting this marketing strategy be your only form of marketing, as implementation into your existing marketing strategy will ensure its success. If you would like a complimentary strategy session to review your business needs go to www.GoMobileMediaMarketing.com or call me toll free 1-888-544-4639.
Go Mobile today and engage your 24/7 connected customer and stay one step ahead of your competition!
Pam Lehr?s dream of becoming an entrepreneur became reality over 15 years ago. Pam?s passion and marketing expertise allows her to guide small to mid-sized businesses to implement mobile marketing strategies and achieve a competitive advantage using mobile devices to engage their 24/7 connected customers to help them increase exposure, attract more customers and boost sales. Pam is at the forefront of a whole new world of opportunity and is committed to sharing her expertise with businesses who are ready to embrace mobile, the newest mass media.
Be sure to tag me (add @Amber Ludwig) in the post so I see it and can respond.
?1955 Thunderbird, Restored, Correct Torch Red inside & outside per data plate.
Previous Rebuilt Y Block V8-4BBL. Odometer 44,000 miles. Minter Rebuilt Ford-O-matic 3 speed automatic transmission.
Telescopic steering, 4 way power seat, Thunderbird Am/Fm, Accessory engine dress up option.
Nice correct Torch Red & White interior with proper embossments. Trunk refinished in Torch Red carpet for sound deadener.
Correct accessory wire wheel covers with 670 x 15 wide whitewalls.
Fully detailed engine & trunk compartments. Bottom side clean and detailed for show.
The first 3 pictures are most current. Showing removing of non original mirrors & radio antenna, Color sand & show buff of complete exterior, refinishing fender skirts with correct stainless trim & seals, Reinstalling correct mirror and antenna.
Your Choice of Thunderbird Wire Wheels or Wire Wheel Covers
?
The Robust Affordable Next Generation Energy Storage Systems (RANGE) program seeks to improve EV range and reduce vehicle costs by re-envisioning the total EV battery system, rather than working to increase the energy density of individual battery cells.?
RANGE projects will focus on developing robust battery chemistries and architectures that would improve vehicle driving range and overall battery robustness. RANGE projects will also focus on multifunctional energy storage designs that use these robust storage systems to simultaneously serve other functions on a vehicle, thus further reducing an energy storage system?s effective weight and overall electric vehicle weight.
ARPA-E is encouraging outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams for RANGE applications and projects. ARPA-E believes that interdisciplinary and cross-organizational collaborations can facilitate scientific and technological discoveries that a single group alone would not be able to achieve.
If you are interested in forming a RANGE team within Oregon, Drive Oregon may be able to help you connect with potential partner researchers or companies. ?Email emmaline@driveoregon.org to get that conversation started.
Details
The submission deadline for RANGE Concept Papers is 5 p.m. ET on March 21, 2013.
To view the full RANGE Funding Opportunity Announcement, find more information on?RANGE Teaming Partner arrangements or apply for RANGE funding, please visit the?ARPA-E Funding Opportunity Exchange.
Feb. 19, 2013 ? Understanding how and why diversification occurs is important for understanding why there are so many species on Earth. In a new study published on 19 February in the open access journal PLOS Biology, researchers show that similar -- or even identical -- mutations can occur during diversification in completely separate populations of E. coli evolving in different environments over more than 1000 generations. Evolution, therefore, can be surprisingly predictable.
The experiment, conducted by Matthew Herron, research assistant professor at the University of Montana, and Professor Michael Doebeli of the University of British Columbia, involved 3 different populations of bacteria. At the start of the experiment, each population consisted of generalists competing for two different sources of dietary carbon (glucose and acetate), but after 1200 generations they had evolved into two coexisting types each with a specialized physiology adapted to one of the carbon sources. Herron and Doebeli were able to sequence the genomes of populations of bacteria frozen at 16 different points during their evolution, and discovered a surprising amount of similarity in their evolution.
"In all three populations it seems to be more or less the same core set of genes that are causing the two phenotypes that we see," Herron said. "In a few cases, it's even the exact same genetic change."
Recent advances in sequencing technology allowed Herron and Doebeli to sequence large numbers of whole bacterial genomes and provide evidence that there is predictability in evolutionary diversity. Any evolutionary process is some combination of predictable and unpredictable processes with random mutations, but seeing the same genetic changes in different populations showed that selection can be deterministic.
"There are about 4.5 million nucleotides in the E. coli genome," he said. "Finding in four cases that the exact same change had happened independently in different populations was intriguing."
Herron and Doebeli argue that a particular form of selection -- negative frequency dependence -- plays an important role in driving diversification. When bacteria are either glucose specialists or acetate specialists, a higher density of one type will mean fewer resources for that type, so bacteria specializing on the alternative resource will be at an advantage.
"We think it's likely that some kind of negative frequency dependence -- some kind of rare type advantage -- is important in many cases of diversification, especially when there's no geographic isolation," Herron said.
As technology advances, Herron believes that similar experiments in larger organisms will soon be possible. Some examples of diversification without geographic isolation are known in plants and animals, but it remains to be seen whether or not the underlying evolutionary processes are similar to those in bacteria.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.
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Journal Reference:
Herron MD, Doebeli M. Parallel Evolutionary Dynamics of Adaptive Diversification in Escherichia coli. PLOS Biol, 11(2): e1001490 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001490
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
McCain meets GOP base, discovers they?re still insane.
Associated Press:
[On] Tuesday, McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security. A bipartisan group of senators ? including Arizona Republicans McCain and Jeff Flake ? want assurances on border security as Congress weighs what could be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 30 years. Arizona is the only state with both of its senators working on immigration reform in Congress, a sign of the state?s widely debated border security issues.
[?]
During a heated town hall gathering in the Phoenix suburb of Sun Lakes, McCain said the border near Yuma is largely secure, but he said smugglers are using the border near Tucson to pump drugs into Phoenix. He said immigration reform should be contingent on better border security that must rely largely on technology able to detect border crossings.
McCain said a tamper-proof Social Security card would help combat identity fraud, and noted any path to citizenship must require immigrants to learn English, cover back taxes and pay fines for breaking immigration laws.
?There are 11 million people living here illegally,? he said. ?We are not going to get enough buses to deport them.?
This did not go well. AP reports that ?Some audience members shouted out their disapproval.?
One man yelled that only guns would discourage illegal immigration. Another man complained that illegal immigrants should never be able to become citizens or vote. A third man said illegal immigrants were illiterate invaders who wanted free government benefits.
Of course, John McCain knows how crazy the GOP base has gotten over the years. If he didn?t, he never would?ve inflicted Sarah Palin on the nation. These people are a monster of the GOP?s own creation; the result of using Fox News, talk radio, and rightwing blogs to sway public opinion. Now, when Republicans speak to their base, they?re speaking to a crowd of ignorant, panicked, and intolerant dopes who repeat the unworkable wingnut media talking points back at them.
And this is what?s going to throw the Republicans? big plan for a party makeover. They can?t change anything without pissing off the base and they can?t win over new voters without changing anything. In the end, self-interest kicks in, elected officials realize they need the base to be reelected, and all plans for change go out the window. Their own efforts to drive Americans crazy have now doomed them to further and deeper irrelevance.
Republicans are victims of their own success. Serves them right.
BEIJING/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A secretive Chinese military unit is believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks, a U.S. computer security company said, prompting a strong denial by China and accusations that it was in fact the victim of U.S. hacking.
The company, Mandiant, identified the People's Liberation Army's Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind the hacking. Mandiant said it believed the unit had carried out "sustained" attacks on a wide range of industries.
"The nature of 'Unit 61398's' work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful 'Computer Network Operations'," Mandiant said in a report released in the United States on Monday.
"It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat that threat effectively," it said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the government firmly opposed hacking, adding that it doubted the evidence provided in the report.
"Hacking attacks are transnational and anonymous. Determining their origins are extremely difficult. We don't know how the evidence in this so-called report can be tenable," spokesman Hong Lei told a daily news briefing.
"Arbitrary criticism based on rudimentary data is irresponsible, unprofessional and not helpful in resolving the issue."
Hong cited a Chinese study which pointed to the United States as being behind hacking in China.
"Of the above mentioned Internet hacking attacks, attacks originating from the United States rank first."
China's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to faxed questions about the report.
Unit 61398 is located in Shanghai's Pudong district, China's financial and banking hub, and is staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in English as well as computer programming and network operations, Mandiant said in its report.
The unit had stolen "hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006", it said.
Most of the victims were located in the United States, with smaller numbers in Canada and Britain. The information stolen ranged from details on mergers and acquisitions to the emails of senior employees, the company said.
The 12-storey building, which houses the unit, sits in an unassuming residential area and is surrounded by a wall adorned with military propaganda photos and slogans; outside the gate a sign warns members of the public they are in a restricted military area and should not take pictures.
There were no obvious signs of extra security on Tuesday.
"ECONOMIC CYBER ESPIONAGE"
Some experts said they doubted Chinese government denials of military involvement in the hacking.
"The PLA plays a key role in China's multi-faceted security strategy, so it makes sense that its resources would be used to facilitate economic cyber espionage that helps the Chinese economy," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer and co-founder of CrowdStrike, one of Mandiant's competitors.
Though privately held and little known to the general public, Mandiant is one of a handful of U.S. cyber-security companies that specialize in attempting to detect, prevent and trace the most advanced hacking attacks, instead of the garden-variety viruses and criminal intrusions that befoul corporate networks on a daily basis.
But Mandiant does not promote its analysis in public and only rarely issues topical papers about changes in techniques or behaviors.
It has never before given the apparent proper names of suspected hackers or directly tied them to a military branch of the Chinese government, giving the new report special resonance.
The company published details of the attack programs and dummy websites used to infiltrate U.S. companies, typically via deceptive emails.
U.S. officials have complained in the past to China about sanctioned trade-secret theft, but have had a limited public record to point to.
Mandiant said it knew the PLA would shift tactics and programs in response to its report but concluded that the disclosure was worth it because of the scale of the harm and the ability of China to issue denials in the past and duck accountability.
The company traced Unit 61398's presence on the Internet - including registration data for a question-and-answer session with a Chinese professor and numeric Internet addresses within a block assigned to the PLA unit - and concluded that it was a major contributor to operations against the U.S. companies.
Members of Congress and intelligence authorities in the United States have publicized the same general conclusions: that economic espionage is an official mission of the PLA and other elements of the Chinese government, and that hacking is a primary method.
In November 2011, the U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive publicly decried China in particular as the biggest known thief of U.S. trade secrets.
The Mandiant report comes a week after U.S. President Barack Obama issued a long-awaited executive order aimed at getting the private owners of power plants and other critical infrastructure to share data on attacks with officials and to begin to follow consensus best practices on security.
Both U.S. Democrats and Republicans have said more powerful legislation is needed, citing Chinese penetration not just of the largest companies but of operations essential to a functioning country, including those comprising the electric grid.
(Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING, Carlos Barria in SHANGHAI and Jim Finkle in BOSTON; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sanjeev Miglani)
? Mark, Atiku, others urge proper use of belief for development
From IHEANACHO NWOSU and TAIWO AMODU, Abuja
Former president of Ghana, Dr. John Kufuor has advised African leaders to use religion as a tool for development rather than divisive machinery to cause disaffection. Kufuor gave the charge yesterday as the guest lecturer at the 10th anniversary lecture of The Sun Newspapers that held in Abuja.
He admonished that for Nigeria and other African countries to overcome current security challenges, and chart a development path religion must be separated from politics. Other eminent leaders at the lecture shared Kufuor?s position on the proper use of religion as a tool to further the cause of democracy in the continent beset by religious crises that always have political trappings.
He spoke on ?Religion, Strife and the Future of Democracy in Africa.? The former Ghanaian president noted that democratic rights and that of religion were inseparable. He, however, cautioned that politicians should not take advantage of it to cause strife among the people He lamented that conflicts arising from religious differences were holding sway in most parts of Africa, thus distracting the leaders from focusing on developmental challenges facing the continent.
He said: ?As of now, however, there is no gainsaying the reality that conflicts based on religion are still with us. In Africa, the pursuit of freedom and self-determination have caused so much civil strife, decimated entire population and caused a lot of misery to our people. The former Ghanaian president cited Sudan where ?religion sometimes appeared to be on a collision course with the state, or the state, using religion, appeared to be on a collision course with its people.? Kufour stressed that religion should strengthen democracy and not endangering it. ?Religion should rather reinforce democracy,? he said.
He identified dogmatism and extremism as the cause of religious strife, recommending that efforts should be made to stop promoters of this style of religion. According to him, to tame the activities of extremists and religious bigots, the media must downplay issues that were capable of inflaming passion among people. He advised them to emphasize moves and actions that would promote peace, harmony and development. He said: ?In considering the huge influence the media wields in human affairs around the world, we should not lose sight of the fact that some media outlets wield their influence not too positively for the social good. ?It bears stating that it should be part of your professional ethics to exercise a high sense of social responsibility in the practice of your profession, so as not to become agents of destabilization in society.
?The media, as a mirror of the society, has a bounding role to play in ensuring that the positive, and not the negative aspects of humanity, are portrayed. The impact and power of the media in shaping the minds of the people make it imperative that they continuously emphasize what will bring peace, harmony and development instead of what will bring fear, anger and civil strife.? Referring to those hiding under religion to foment trouble, Senate President, David Mark said no religion is against peace.
He accused some people of taking advantage of the freedom of speech and movement that democracy offered to promote extremism. Mark noted that religion and politics were not compatible, condemning a situation where some politicians instead of campaigning on issues, rather spread religious falsehood and intolerance. The Senate president, who chaired the occasion, stressed that religious fundamentalism posed great threat to democracy both in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
He advocated continual inter-faith dialogue to address some issues that were causing religious misunderstanding. According to him, such dialogue would help erase misgivings about different religions. He counselled that, ?all religions must relate with one another with respect. All must include sovereignty and respect for human rights in their messages.? Echoing the Senate president, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, urged political leaders to exercise restraint on religious matters as he declared that only failed politicians use religion to galvanize support.
He recalled his opposition to the introduction of Sharia in some states in the North when he was deputy to former president Olusegun Obasanjo. He also said he opposed state sponsorship of pilgrims. The former vice president, who was the special guest of honour, regretted that different parts of Africa had been torn apart by religious and ethnic-induced strife. He said: ?This had been at a great cost to a continent facing challenges of poverty and natural disasters.?
He called on political and religious leaders to use the vast resources on the continent to cater for the needs of the people even as he re-echoed the view of Mark that all religions preach peace. Atiku admonished leaders, at all levels, to ensure justice and fair play in the handling of leadership issues, saying it would help reduce ethnic and religious distrust in the country. Earlier in his welcome address, former Abia State governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu praised the pioneer management of the company for putting The Sun titles on a sound footing. He said the newspaper would continue to strive to meet the aspirations and expectations of Nigeria. He said the motto of the newspaper, Voice of the Nation, would remain the focus of the management.
He thanked the Guest Lecturer, Dr. Kufuor for his untiring friendship with the people of Nigeria and other African states. Dignitaries, who graced the occasion include lawmakers, Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Sa?ad Abubakar III, over 15 ambassadors and other members of the diplomatic community, ex-governors, former ministers, party chairmen, media chiefs, top government officials and the academia.
This Jan. 15, 2013 photo shows country singer and actor Tim McGraw in Nashville, Tenn. His latest album, "Two Lanes of Freedom," will be released on Tuesday, Feb. 5. (Photo by Donn Jones/Invision/AP)
This Jan. 15, 2013 photo shows country singer and actor Tim McGraw in Nashville, Tenn. His latest album, "Two Lanes of Freedom," will be released on Tuesday, Feb. 5. (Photo by Donn Jones/Invision/AP)
This Jan. 15, 2013 photo shows country singer and actor Tim McGraw in Nashville, Tenn. His latest album, "Two Lanes of Freedom," will be released on Tuesday, Feb. 5. (Photo by Donn Jones/Invision/AP)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? The Tennessee Supreme Court has put an end to Curb Records' fight to keep Tim McGraw off another label ? two weeks after he released his new album with Big Machine Records.
The court refused to hear Curb's appeal of a lower court's ruling that McGraw was free to record with whomever he wished while his legal fight with his longtime label continued through the court system. An appeals court affirmed that ruling last year and Curb sought the Supreme Court's help. The court signed an order last week denying the appeal.
McGraw released "Two Lanes of Freedom" on his new label on Feb. 5. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 all-genre albums chart, selling more than 106,000 copies. It's the first album of his career not to be released on Curb.
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Public release date: 22-Feb-2013
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Sony is reportedly going to release the Android 4.2.2 update for Xperia Z smartphone by the end of March in Europe, claims Xperia Blog. The blog claims that a tipster has given them this information along with the following screenshot from an Xperia Z phone running on test build of the same software.
Mobile marketers like to define it as businesses communicating with consumers on their mobile phones with their explicit permission at the right time, at the right place while providing relevant value.
Pam Lehr?s dream of becoming an entrepreneur became reality over 15 years ago. Pam?s passion and marketing expertise allows her to guide small to mid-sized businesses to implement mobile marketing strategies and achieve a competitive advantage using mobile devices to engage their 24/7 connected customers to help them increase exposure, attract more customers and boost sales. Pam is at the forefront of a whole new world of opportunity and is committed to sharing her expertise with businesses who are ready to embrace mobile, the newest mass media.