Category: News

It’s the essence of instinct: If you take a lab mouse who has never caught a glimpse of a cat and waft a little eau de feline towards it, the mouse will freeze in fear, and will then back away from the source of the odor. Now researchers have pinned down the chemical signals the mice are reacting to–and have shown in the process a fascinating new form of inter-species communication.

Mice have a specialized organ in their noses that picks up chemical signals, called the vomeronasal organ, which helps them detect pheromones emitted by other mice. These mice pheromones have a direct effect on behavior–most obviously in the realms of mating and fighting. In this new study, published in the journal Cell, neurobiologist Lisa Stowers decided to investigate whether the vomeronasal organ was capable of picking up signals from other species as well.

The reseachers took normal lab mice and mutant mice with inactive vomeronasal organs and presented them with cotton balls laced with predator smells, including cat saliva and rat urine. The normal mice backed into the corners of their cages as if trying to escape a predator’s attention, but the mutant mice showed no signs of concern. The mutants were so relaxed that they didn’t even react when a live but anesthetized rat was placed in their cages.

“In fact, one of our subjects curled up and went to sleep next to the rat,” Dr. Stowers said. “We think he was cold” [The New York Times].

The researchers then identified the precise chemicals that were triggering the fear reaction in mice by dripping one chemical compound at a time on to a cotton ball, and found that compounds called Mups, or major urinary proteins, were the active ingredient. Despite their name, Mups aren’t only present in urine, but also in saliva and other secretions.

Experts say this work is a major step forward for understanding the biology of fear.

“This paper moves the field forward by about a century, because it actually identifies the proteins that are responsible for eliciting fear in mice,” says Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. It also shows that “Mups can be used not only for chemical conversations of animals in the same species, but they can also send information across species” [ScienceNOW].

Related Content:
80beats: Sniffing Out Sickness: Mouse Noses Respond to the Urine of Diseased Mice
80beats: Mammals Have a Nose for Danger (Literally)
80beats: Do Humans Communicate Via Pheromones? The Jury Is Still Out
DISCOVER: The Brain: The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells
DISCOVER: Top 100 Stories of 2009, #75: Yes, You Really Can Smell Fear

Image: iStockphoto

Coming a few weeks after its webOS sibling, it appears that the Palm Pixi Plus will be arriving on AT&T on June 6th.  The device will launch at a price of $49.95 on a two-year contract and will be similar to Verizon’s Pixi Plus except that the back of AT&T’s version has a slight blue hue.  While some may feel that both Palm devices are starting to get a little stale at this point, I’m sure there are some AT&T users who will love to get their hands on a GSM Pixi Plus.  However, the bad news for the Pixi is that it will be competing with several highly-anticipated phones such as the EVO 4G, being released on June 4th, and the next gen iPhone, which is expected to be released sometime later in June.  Are you planning on picking up a Pixi Plus on AT&T?  Tell us in the comments!

Via SlashPhone

Earlier this morning the Euro failed to retake $1.24, now it’s broken through $1.23.

JP Morgan perhaps took some profits too soon, but they’re still shorting the euro:

JP Morgan’s Sophia Drossos:

We have decided to take partial profit on the core short EUR/USD position in our model portfolio, paring down the position to 15% from a 25% allocation and tightening our trailing stop-loss to 1.34. This trade was initiated originally on December 17, at an average entry level of 1.4085, and we are exiting at 1.2365, locking in a gain of 12.6%. Year-to-date, our model portfolio has generated an unlevered return of 4.81%, with the short EUR/USD position accounting for a large portion of this performance.

While we retain a negative medium-term view on EUR/USD, we believe that short positioning and bearish sentiment have reached extreme levels, raising the potential for a bounce.

That bounce they were worrying about? Looks dead as of this afternoon.

(Via JP Morgan, Take partial profit on EUR/USD short, Sophia Drossos, 18 May 2010)

Join the conversation about this story »

If your brand brief for a new purse contains descriptors like "high fashion," "sophisticated," "sleek," "sexy" and "sensuous elegance," you’d surely want to name the thing a "Schitbag." Right? If the fashion world is being duped by this, maybe we’ll all have a good laugh at some point. But press materials went out recently touting The Original Schitbag (pronounced skit-bag?) as a new must-have purse for the fall. Various blogs have picked it up, asking, naturally, what kind of a name is Schitbag? And would you, haute couture maven, be caught dead with one? The product, which just launched from a company called LeSchitte Designs (I am not making this up), is a "hands-free" waist bag, kind of like a fanny pack, that "represents the ultimate combination of beauty, form and function," according to the marketer’s website. It’s suede and comes with an endorsement from celebrity stylist Shari Geffen, who’s worked with celebs like Julia Roberts, Sarah Jessica Parker and Johnny Depp. Geffen wears her Schitbag proudly, or so she says in the company’s PR. Did they market test that name? This could be the best branding move ever or the most boneheaded. Image consultants out there, what’s your read on this?

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Despite a political firestorm about Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s statements about his service during the Vietnam War, national Democrats were still behind him on Tuesday afternoon.

The Washington Post has the details at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/national_dems_standing_by_blum.html

Jessica Cabot was born blind, but she’d been on two flights by herself before boarding a United Airlines flight last month, so she figured she knew what to expect. On all three flights, she was told by the flight attendants to remain seated until everyone else was off the plane, and then someone would help her off. That worked the first two times at any rate.

She said she heard the other passengers leave and then the unmistakable sound of the aircraft door being sealed shut.

“And then, just complete silence. And I started calling out with no response.”

That’s when she realized she was alone, she said. She had no idea how to open the plane’s door or whether that would be a safe thing to do.

She said she was stuck for 10 minutes, uncertain what to do, but was found by a maintenance crew that happened to enter the aircraft.

United offered her a $250 travel voucher and told the CBC that they’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I hope that includes a sign on the plane that reads REMEMBER TO CHECK THE PLANE BEFORE LOCKING IT.

“Blind woman abandoned on airplane” [Yahoo! News] (Thanks to William!)

Howard Lovy wrote:

Automation Alley, a Troy, MI-based business association, has opened a defense office at the Macomb-Oakland University INCubator, in Sterling Heights, MI, the group announced today. The office will provide assistance local companies that are looking to work with the military. One  project includes creating an industrial capabilities database to identify new military suppliers. Companies interested in being added to the database can visit www.dmsms-tardec-army.com.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

As promised by Google when they announced they were closing down the online shop, the Nexus One is becoming available with some new providers.

Right now you can order a Nexus One online from SFR, (French provider part of Vodafone group) as it will be soon available in their stores (from the 25th May).  The cost will be between 129 euro on a 12 month contrat to 419 euro on pay as you go offer. The latter is really a good deal as this Nexus One is sim-free and has no SFR customization, no extra apps. It is the same model as the one that was offered initially online by Google. SFR has obtained an exclusivity for 6 months.  The Nexus One is also available with Vodafone UK for free but only with a contract.

Might We Suggest…

• Conspiracy Theory: Is Apple Orchestrating a Media Attack on Google?
  For various reasons, I’ve had plenty of free time on my hands lately.  And since I’m an Android Guy, I was closely following the CES 2010 developments.  I was also reading all I could about the Nexu…

I can’t say I’ve ever had a problem with the current design of scissors which has served us well since the mid-1700s, but designer Spencer Nugent has seen fit to magic up these Comfort Grip scissors. More »

Declaring the University’s efforts to improve the state of global health knowledge, education, and capacity building to be one of her “very highest priorities” as president of Harvard, Drew Faust today (May 18) announced the appointment of Sue J. Goldie, Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health and director of the Center for Health Decision Science at the Harvard School of Public Health, as the director of the Harvard Institute for Global Health (HIGH).

Faust also announced that the work of HIGH is so integral to the long-term focus and goals of Harvard that the organization that began its existence as an experimental faculty “initiative” has been granted permanent institute status.

“I believe that this is truly a moment of special possibility for global health, both in the world and here at Harvard,” said Faust. “If we needed to be reminded of this, we have been this past year, first with the global H1N1 pandemic, and then when the earthquake struck Haiti and we saw the world come together.

“We need to engage and equip our students, who are telling us in ever increasing numbers that they want to engage in the global health effort,” Faust continued. “We need to support the very best researchers and the work of our outstanding faculty, in fields stretching across the spectrum of inquiry from immunology to epidemiology, health policy, history, molecular biology, and philosophy. I have every confidence that Sue Goldie, who has already demonstrated her outstanding scholarship, leadership, and collaborative skills, is the person to lead this special effort.”

The appointment of Goldie, a MacArthur Foundation “genius award” recipient, marks the end of a yearlong, international search for a new director for HIGH. Goldie has been involved with HIGH since 2007, and as co-director of the executive committee worked to bring faculty from all parts of the University together, consistently advocating on behalf of junior faculty interested in global health.

Because HIGH is above all a collaborative organization dedicated to educating and training the next generation of global health leaders, Faust also appointed two faculty leaders to direct the critically important educational and training efforts.

Paul Farmer, the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), will oversee global health medical education and physician training. Farmer, also a MacArthur Fellowship winner, is chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at HMS, professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health, chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and is perhaps best known internationally as a co-founder of the global nonprofit Partners In Health.

David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in Harvard’s Department of Economics and a member of the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School, will direct undergraduate and graduate programs in global health. Cutler, who worked on health care reform in the Clinton administration and served as a health care adviser to the Obama campaign, is a member of HIGH’s faculty executive committee, served as HIGH’s interim director for the past year, and led the effort to create a secondary concentration in global health at Harvard College.

Goldie said, “Strong leadership in global health already resides in the faculty of the Medical School, School of Public Health, and academic hospitals. As the faculty director for the Harvard Institute for Global Health, I see myself principally as a coordinator, facilitator, and collaborator. With a leadership team comprised of myself, Paul Farmer, and David Cutler, I am confident we can create a University-wide community that is bound by a sense of shared mission.”

“Global health is an intellectual and practical topic of tremendous interest to our undergraduate and graduate students,” said Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and John H. Finley Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “Professors Goldie, Farmer, and Cutler are exactly the kind of seasoned leaders we need for such an important, University-wide institute. I am also thrilled that each brings to the institute a deep commitment to Harvard’s extensive educational offerings in global health.”

Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman said that granting institute status to HIGH and appointing Goldie “mark a very significant step along what has been a 15-year journey toward a truly collaborative and more interdisciplinary Harvard. Global health is an area in which we already have world-class researchers, clinicians, teachers, and students,” Hyman said. “By bringing them all together as parts of a coordinated whole, without boundaries or silos, we expect to have far more impact than we would expect from the already considerable sum of the many parts of our global health effort.”

“It is my conviction that for Harvard to remain a leader in the burgeoning field of global health, we must invest heavily in linking service to training and research,” Farmer said. “Since global health is not a discipline, but rather a collection of problems, we need to draw on the strengths of the Medical School, the School of Public Health, and the teaching hospitals — and especially on the work of our partner sites — to help tackle the biggest challenge of our time: understanding and improving delivery of services in this country and in others. Global health is a new paradigm and very different from its predecessor paradigm, international health. Boston is on the globe, too,” Farmer noted.

Cutler said he sees HIGH coordinating the teaching and training of students at all levels. “For undergraduates, this means having courses for those who want to learn a little, up to those who want to make global health their life’s focus,” he said. “It also means providing students with the ability to interact with the world and practice what they learn. For graduate students, this involves direct training in global health issues, access to people and research sites, and integration of the skills of many different disciplines. It will take a collaboration of faculty all across Harvard to make this happen. I know the faculty are eager to participate, and I look forward to helping organize them.”

The global health leadership appointments were praised by both Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Jeffrey Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School.

“Sue Goldie, Paul Farmer, and David Cutler are uniquely qualified to lead HIGH to a new stage of development,” Frenk said. “The key to achieving successfully the institute’s mission will continue to be the ability to build bridges across the amazing intellectual capital of the entire University. Professors Goldie, Farmer, and Cutler have exceptional skills in team building and mentoring. They are also deeply committed to the educational mission of HIGH, as demonstrated by their crucial role in expanding the course offerings in global health and by their own dedication to teaching.”

Flier said, “This is a signal moment in our effort to bring together under a single banner the disparate parts of a world-class program in global health. I have no doubt that Sue Goldie, Paul Farmer, and David Cutler have the vision, collaborative instincts, and determination to bring people together in this common cause, and that together they will create a truly collaborative, interdisciplinary program that will benefit not only all the world’s peoples, but also will benefit Harvard as a university.”

Trained as a physician, decision scientist, and public health researcher, Goldie has broad interests that include using evidence-based policy to narrow the gap between rich and poor, leveraging science and technology as tools for global diplomacy, strengthening capacity through sustainable nonexploitative partnerships, and fostering innovation in education locally and globally. Drawn to health problems in the most vulnerable populations, she conducts rigorous analysis using the methods and tools of decision science, which uses mathematics to solve resource problems, to inform complex and difficult policy decisions. Her analytic work relates to a wide range of topics — from vaccine-preventable diseases to maternal mortality — in many settings, from disparities in the United States to broad failures of public health delivery in the poorest countries.

An accomplished scientist, Goldie has published 150 original research papers and has been principal investigator on awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, which in 2005 awarded her its grant “for genius and creativity” in applying the tools of decision science to combat major public health problems.

She has received numerous teaching and mentorship awards, including the Harvard School of Public Health mentoring award and the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard University. She serves on the Standing Committee on Health Policy, teaches one of the largest classes at the School of Public Health in decision science, and this year also taught a new undergraduate class as part of the Gen Ed curriculum.

A member of the Institute of Medicine, Goldie is a graduate of Union College and Albany Medical College. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale University School of Medicine, and earned her M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1997. She joined the faculty of the School of Public Health in 1998.

Ford dreamed of it for long and finally the blue oval has managed to get an amazing EPA rating of 40mpg on the highway. The car that did the trick for Ford is the 2011 Fiesta and the latest EPS numbers suggest that it gets 29mpg in the city as well. Compare those numbers with the Toyota Yaris (4mpg lesser) and the Honda Fit (5mpg lesser) and we easily have a class leading commuter in the Ford Fiesta 2011. The US version of the Fiesta is powered by a 120hp1.6-liter Duratec four-cylinder engine and it comes with either a manual five-speed or a six-speed PowerShift automatic transmission, the latter option being the one to fetch those EPA numbers. Expected to arrive at dealerships this summer, the 2011 Ford Fiesta will bear a price tag of $13,995.

Filed under: Spy Photos, Coupe, Sedan, Performance, Paris Motor Show, Audi

Even though we won’t see the production version of the standard Audi A7 until this year’s Paris Motor Show, the men and women in Ingolstadt are already prepping a hotted-up version of the swoopy four-door coupe (we still aren’t used to typing that), as seen here in this latest set of spy shots. Rumors have stated that a RS7 Sportback might debut alongside the A7 in Paris, complete with a 580-horsepower V10, and it would certainly be show-stopping if Audi could pull off having all three variants of the A7 range on hand.

As for the car spied here, we spot larger air intakes, a more robust wheel/tire package, bigger brakes and quad exhaust pipes, seemingly proving that this A7 will definitely arrive wearing an S badge. However, the camouflaged beast isn’t as muscular as Audi’s RS models, which leads us to believe that the mid-range S7 is what’s under all of the swirly paper. As for what’s housed beneath the hood, your guess is as good as ours, but something along the lines of Audi’s new supercharged 3.0-liter V6 or the free-breathing 4.2-liter V8 could be in order. Scroll through the gallery below to see the S7 prototype from all angles.

[Source: CarPix]

Spy Shots: First look at Audi S7 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 18 May 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost

During his speech to shareholders and employees at BMW Group’s 90th Annual General Meeting, CEO Norbert Reithofer said that Rolls-Royce sales are on the rise.

“In the upper luxury segment, we started the global introduction of the Rolls-Royce Ghost at the beginning of the year,” Reithofer said. “Rolls-Royce sales are also on the rise: In the first four months of the year, 408 automobiles were delivered to customers, 100 percent more than in the same period last year.”

Click here to get prices on the 2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost is on sale now with prices starting at $245,000.

It has been reported that Rolls-Royce is working on a hybrid version of the Ghost that will share its technology with the BMW ActiveHybrid 7. Fuel-economy of the hybrid version should be improved by 15 percent. The standard Ghost manages an estimated fuel-economy of 17 mpg.

Rolls-Royce is also rumored to be working on an electric version of the Phantom on the roads within 12 months.

2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost:

– By: Omar Rana

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone on a populist attack against speculators by proposing a ban on naked short selling and CDS trading on a select set of securities.

That ban would impact European government bonds and 10 select German financial institutions within the eurozone.

The ban is being proposed by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

This move comes in the context of a German public severely displeased with the decision to bailout the fringe eurozone states at their own expense. Domestically, West Germans already support the eastern half of their country, which was reunified in 1990. Under the European Union, German taxes also subsidize development projects in other European countries.

The burden of the Greek bailout seems a step too far for many, particularly a center-right government under Chancellor Andrea Merkel.

Now her government has decided naked short selling and CDS speculation will end on European government debt and German financials.

How Germany intends to ban these activities has not yet been revealed, and it seems unlikely Germany will be able to ban speculation on all European sovereign bonds, which are not only traded in Germany.

What this does, in the short term, is increase market distrust in the eurozone. If Merkel wants to ban naked short selling, clearly she lacks confidence in European financial stability German financial companies.

This could lead to investors seeking alternative means to make these moves.

Now the euro is falling on the news:

Join the conversation about this story »

One of my many hang-ups with HTPCs is organization of the media.  In my perfect world, all TV shows up under TV regardless of whether it is something I recorded using my HTPC tuners, something I imported from a video file or even a ripped TV-series DVD from my DVD collection.  When someone using my HTPC is looking for a TV show it should always be listed under TV.
The problem with this is SageTV sees things differently.  If you import a video file – even if its a TV show it knows it hasn’t been recorded from the DVR function and therefore relegates it to “Videos.”  So what’s a perfectionist to do?
The answer is actually quite simple although I haven’t found a clear-cut how-to on this so I decided to write one myself to help out other overly-orderly SageTV users like myself.
There is another method that involves a very impressive metadata manager for SageTV called BMT (Batch Metadata Tools).  I’ll hold that method for a future how-to for now and focus on this simple method using SageTV Web Server:
The complete how-to after the jump…

Steps to Change a SageTV video file to the Recorded TV section

Note:  This is assuming you’ve already imported the video in question into SageTV’s database.
Step 1 – Install SageTV Web Server following these instructions
Step 2 – Select “Media Library” and “Search Imported Videos” from the top menu of SageTV Web Server

Step 3 – Search for the video.  In this example I searched for “Good Eats”

Below you see the found video file which is a mpg.  It currently is listed in videos – and I want it to show up under TV.

Step 4 – Select the video file you wish to convert, then click on “Edit Show Info” with your mouse

Step 5 – Put a checkmark in the “Edit Show Information” box.  Don’t worry about the warning – it’s been there for years and I have yet to mess up my SageTV database.  To be safe you can always back up your wiz.bin (database) file – I recommend you do this regularly anyway.

Step 6 – Once you’ve selected “edit show information” all fields will be editable.  Feel free to fill in any of the blanks like show name, episode name, category, description etc.  The key here is to make sure “Auto Generate New EPxxx EPGID” is selected with a checkmark.  This is what will move the video to the TV section by tricking SageTV into thinking it was recorded by SageTV.

Step 7 – Now you can click on the “update” button at the bottom-left of the page.

That’s it.  You can now open up SageTV and the file will be listed under TV.  Note that I left the “Show Name” as “Good Eats – S06E11 – Casserole Over” which really isn’t a great way to name it.  It’s best to name the show by the series name “Good Eats” and then name the episode name with… well the episode name.  But you get the idea.

The other way is a bit more automated and involves a really nice add-on known as BMT (Batch Metadata Tools).  I’ll cover that in a future how-to.

Care of the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who’s among the most vocal critics of the White House plan to expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast.

Speaking of Texas political goofballery…

I’ve written extensively about the maniacal practices of the Texas State Board of Education: promoting creationism, twisting reality, and most recently engaging in ridiculous historical revisionism. Because, after all, Joseph McCarthy was simply a misunderstood patriot.

<insert rolleyes here>

Well, there’s been an update to this insanity. Two actually: one is that the Texas BoE is now an international embarrassment, since the UK paper The Guardian has picked up on this story. I’d like to think that the more publicity this story gets, the more pressure there will be on Texas citizens to throw those antireality bums out of the BoE. However, I suspect that the people who voted them in in the first place will consider stories like this a badge of honor.

The second bit of news sounds good at first, but I don’t think will make much difference: a California legislator is introducing a bill that will make sure that any Texas nonsense introduced into textbooks will be reviewed by the California BoE, and the results reported both to the Legislature and the secretary of education.

Personally, I don’t see much use for this bill. The concern behind it is that the decisions made by the Texas BoE have national ramifications, since they have such a huge educational system that it’s easier for textbook publishers to simply use the Texas standards in their books that they sell in the national market. That’s not strictly the case; in reality there are four very large markets that influence textbooks (California is bigger than Texas, in fact, and the other two are Florida and New York). It is true, though, to the best of my knowledge, that Texas does unduly influence the way education is presented in textbooks in national markets, however. I used to work in this business, and talked to quite a few teachers, educational experts, and people who helped create national education standards, so I have some experience in this.

Be that as it may, the California bill doesn’t really do much. It just says that the California BoE has to report any problems they see, but it’s vague on the next step. Even a staff member of Leland Yee, who introduced the bill, says it’s just a precautionary measure. It strikes me that the California BoE should be doing stuff like this anyway, so I’m unsure of the efficacy of a bill like this.

I’ll note that in 2005, Yee passed bills making it illegal to sell video games rated M to minors. I’m a bit of a libertarian when it comes to such things; while I don’t think young kids should be playing violent video games, I don’t think it’s the government’s place to be making it illegal. It strikes me as the government being in loco parentis, as well as just being a bandaid on a much larger issue.

This new BoE bill appears to me to be more of the same thing. We’ll see. I will add one thing: despite my admonitions above, I’m very glad that the government of a big state sees right through the snake oil the Texas BoE is peddling. While I don’t think California needs legislation to make sure the Texas BoE silliness doesn’t infect other states, they certainly need to keep a jaundiced eye on it.

Tip o’ the mortarboard to Slashdot.