Category: News

Luke Timmerman wrote:

There must be a million ideas to help the many millions of obese Americans lose weight. Today, doctors will get a glimpse at a first-of-its-kind treatment from Boston-based Gelesis, where scientists have created a capsule that expands in the stomach to make people feel full and eat less.

Gelesis has said little about this idea since the company was founded with seed financing from Puretech Ventures, plus another $16 million from OrbiMed Advisors, Queensland BioCapital Funds, Puretech, and others in January 2008. Now Gelesis has results from a clinical trial of 95 people who were randomly assigned to take the company’s superabsorbent hydrogel capsules (Attiva) or a placebo. The capsules helped people feel full after meals and less hungry in between, researchers said. And, importantly, the treatment was well-tolerated. The findings were presented at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists annual meeting in Boston.

Anyone following the news knows that the obesity epidemic in the U.S. has gotten so big that it poses a threat to the healthcare system, and, simultaneously, represents a monster business opportunity. Health officials now say two-thirds of U.S. adults have become overweight or obese, which raises the risk for a whole raft of other conditions like diabetes, heart attacks, and depression to name a few. Doctors often advise people to eat healthier and exercise more, without much luck. A few biotech companies are racing to win FDA approval of new drugs, but Big Pharma companies have tread cautiously in this field since the fen-phen debacle of the ’90s. Gastric bypass surgery to shrink the stomach can help people, although the procedure carries significant risks.

Alessandro Sannino

The idea at Gelesis is to come at this problem with a completely new method. It’s essentially a way to reduce stomach volume without subjecting people to the invasiveness and potential complications of surgery.

“For the first time a group was able to overcome the enormous technical hurdles in creating a super-absorbent polymer,” said Robert Langer, the prominent bioengineering professor at MIT, in a company statement. Langer isn’t a founder of the company, although he advised Puretech Ventures on the technology before the firm seeded Gelesis in 2006. Based on today’s results, Langer added: “This opens the door for entirely new uses of polymers in medicine.”

I took a closer look at this yesterday during a conference call with three key players of Genesis. Daphne Zohar and Eric Elenko of Puretech Ventures, and the co-inventor of the technology, Alessandro Sannino, a professor of engineering at the University of Sallento in Italy, who has been working on this idea for 15 years. The company also has recruited a lot of prominent advisers with different layers of expertise. James Hill, a University of Colorado professor and past president of The Obesity Society brings obesity knowledge; Allan Geliebter, a phychologist at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital is a pioneer of the gastric balloon; Lee Kaplan of Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center is a leading researcher in gastric bypass surgery. John LaMattina, a former president of Pfizer’s global R&D operation, has joined the Gelesis board.

You can take a look at how this technique is supposed to work by watching this animation on the Gelesis site, which lasts a little less than four minutes. But’s here the concept in a nutshell: Gelesis has developed a superabsorbent polymer from some unspecified food source. This material, about the size of a grain of sugar, is designed to swell up more than 100-fold …Next Page »

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D-Level reality starlet Kim Kardashian has gone Down Under, where she promoting a series of new projects for her fans in Australia.

Well, Kim’s trip got off to a bang this week after she was groped by former Big Brother Australia star Chrissie Swan on the set of her new Sydney-based talk show.

“A few people have asked if it’s real. You can grab it if you want,” Kim told Chrissie when questioned about her curvaceous bum.

Check out the clip to find out what Chrissie’s verdict was…

Hey it’s summer, what better excuse do we need for posting three yachts in one week? Especially when one of them has been styled after Lamborghini’s sportscars, taking the angle of the chassis and creating a 15m long waterbeast. More »

The IMF has revised down its estimates for the global banking sector’s loan losses and provisions from the credit crisis. A US$533-billion reduction to US$2.276-trillion represents a significant revision from the IMF’s previous estimate published just six months ago.

The IMF data also showed that U.S. and U.K. banks are the most advanced in the cycle, with close to 80% of the estimated write-downs already realized, notes National Bank chief economist and strategist, Stéfane Marion. That compares to 62% in the Euro area.

“The improving economic cycle has helped bolster capital to the point where the IMF expects the remaining writedowns or provisions to be mostly covered by earnings for the aggregate banking system,” Mr. Marion told clients.

However, while the asset side of bank balance sheets is improving, the IMF noted that the liability side may come under increasing pressure in coming months.

Increased earnings and private investment have allowed banks to make substantial improvements to their capital positions. At the same time an improved asset picture leads to less pressure in terms of boosting capital buffers to absorb potential loan and security losses.

However, the IMF cautioned that authorities are likely to strengthen bank capital and liquidity requirements to increase the safety of the financial system. It also noted that banks need to refinance nearly US$5-trillion in debt that will mature in the next three years.

“This will coincide with heavy government issuance and follow the removal of central bank emergency measures,” the report said.

The IMF warned that the overall picture masks problem areas, including some regional banks with heavy real estate exposure in the United States, heavy exposure to real estate development loans in the Spanish banking, and in some regional banks in Germany.

Jonathan Ratner

Los amantes de la competición tuvieron este fin de semana muchos puntos a los que mirar, ya que había diferentes pruebas como el GP de China de Fórmula 1, el Rally de Turquía o la primera prueba del Campeonato del Mundo de GT1, las cuáles pasamos a resumiros a continuación.

En el Circuito de Shanghai, Jenson Button se hizo con el triunfo en el GP de China tras una carrera bastante alocada que volvió a tener a la lluvia como protagonista. Lewis Hamilton fue segundo completando el doblete de McLaren mientras que Nico Rosberg sigue rindiendo mucho mejor que Michael Schumacher y se hizo con la tercera plaza, justo por delante de Fernando Alonso.

La lluvia que aparecía y desaparecía obligó a los pilotos a entrar numerosas veces en el pit lane para cambiar neumáticos. A pesar de que Red Bull se había hecho con una nueva pole position, su rendimiento en carrera disminuyo y no pudieron hacerse con el triunfo. Para Fernando Alonso la carrera fue complicada ya que se adelantó ligeramente en la salida y fue sancionado con un drive through que le obligó a una nueva remontada.

Alonso valoró bien el cuarto puesto dadas las circunstancias pero indicó que no está contento tras llevar tres carreras sin subirse al podium. Al menos, las cosas le van mejor que a Pedro Martínez De la Rosa. El piloto español se vio obligado a abandonar cuando su Sauber tuvo problemas de motor en la novena vuelta. Pedro anda complementamente decepcionado y es que el arranque de Sauber está muy por debajo de lo esperado.

Para Jaime Alguersuari las cosas fueron algo mejor, acabando en el puesto decimotercero. Sin embargo, tampoco estaba contento el piloto de Toro Rosso ya que cometió un error embistiendo al Hispania Racing de Bruno Senna, lo que le obligó a hacer otra parada en boxes.

Por cierto indicar que Hispania volvió a acabar con sus dos monoplazas, lo que es una gran noticia para la escudería española que además esta semana anunció el fichaje de Sakon Yamamoto con el objetivo de seguir desarrollando su monoplaza.

La próxima carrera será en España, entre los días 7 y 9 de Mayo. Estos días se había especulado que la nube volcánica podría causar problemas para desplazar a los equipos pero por el momento la prueba no peligra. El ritmo de venta de entradas para la misma es bueno, y la organización ya ha anunciado que se han agotado algunas de las zonas más baratas.

Si dejamos el asfalto y nos vamos al WRC, tenemos que contar una nueva victoria de Sebastien Loeb. El piloto de Citroën se hizo con el triunfo en el Rally de Turquía por delante de Solberg e Hirvonen. De esta forma, Loeb se apunta su tercer triunfo consecutivo en las sólo cuatro pruebas que van de campeonato y ya aventaja en 40 puntos a Solberg, segundo en el Mundial.

El Rally de Turquía fue dominado por Sebastien Ogier en la primera jornada pero sus opciones se acabaron al sufrir un pinchazo y salida de pista en la segunda. Loeb tomó el mando ahí y ya no lo soltó ampliando su distancia en la última jornada. Hirvonen tuvo problemas el domingo con un pinchazo y peor le fue a Dani Sordo, que tuvo que abandonar en el último día de la prueba.

Por otro lado, también se disputó la primera prueba del Campeonato del Mundo de GT1 en el Circuito Yas Marina en Abu Dhabi. Allí, Romain Grosjean y Thomas Mutsch ganaron la prueba con un Ford GT del equipo Matech Competition.

Recordad que todas las noticias relacionadas con el mundo de la competición podéis encontrarlas en Recta de Meta.

Vía | Recta de Meta

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Jennifer Lopez is about to regret ever buying a camcorder with Ex-Husband from Hell Ojani Noa.

The Cuban chef has been sitting on a stash of “racy” video tapes and photographs starring his famous ex for more than a decade, and now that he’s filing for bankruptcy, Jenn’s valuable “assets” are going up for public auction!

Jennifer, who divorced Noa in 1999, is currently suing her ex in a bid to keep the footage and pictures under wraps, but now that he’s broke, she’ll have to take up her case to the Federal Bankruptcy Court.

Noa can “force the federal bankruptcy trustee to sell his share of the Jennifer Lopez ‘racy’ home videos, plus hundreds and hundreds of unseen and ‘racy’ candid still photos of J-Lo, and Ojani’s tell-all book manuscript about JLo at a public bankruptcy auction, to the highest bidder,” says a bankruptcy expert.

Ed Meyer, Noa’s business partner, told RadarOnline.com this week that Noa has “grown depressed over Jennifer Lopez’s poking fun at marriage (including their previous marriage)” to promote her new movie The Backup Plan, in theaters Friday, and just can’t wait to stick it to the movie star in court.

“Ojani feels he has suffered (and is still suffering) ’spousal abuse’ from JLo,” Meyer added.

Amtrak is experimenting with a bio-diesel fueled train … called the Heartland Flyer.  

" …  nation’s first-ever test of a cleaner and renewable biodiesel fuel blend to power a daily interstate passenger train between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth … research project … on the daily Heartland Flyer train operated by Amtrak … biodiesel blend includes beef byproduct and is provided by a Texas-based vendor."

" … the biodiesel blend known as B20 (20% pure biofuel and 80% diesel) reduced hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide each by 10 percent, reduced particulates by 15 percent and sulfates by 20 percent. … measurements will be taken … at the end of 12 months so any impact of the biodiesel on valves and gaskets can be measured…."

Via:  Amtrak LINK

Yahoo has posted some better-than-expected results for the first quarter of 2010. While revenue stayed flat, income was more than double mostly due to several one-time deals. Money from Microsoft has started pouring in and display ads, arguably Yahoo’s strong suit, have seen a 20-percent uptake in the first three months of the… (read more)

	Volt production pushed up to October? GM says plans “have not changed” So, um, when, exactly?		Scientist wants automakers held accountable for how electricty is generated for plug-ins This not a good idea.
	The Nissan Leaf in five new colors, and other tidbits from the registration process Red, black, white, blue and silver.	Other news: Poll: Who’s already registered to buy a Nissan Leaf? 240 trees offset 1 car per year and other fun facts Video: Largest gathering of Tesla Roadsters ever

AutoblogGreen for 04.22.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[JURIST] A US government official said Wednesday that at least five accused Somali pirates will face charges in the US, according to the Associated Press. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the transfers are pending, said that the accused will arrive in Norfolk, Virginia, by the end of this week. Although Kenyan courts are no longer willing to prosecute piracy cases, the source claims that not all 21 of those recently arrested in piracy incidents will face charges in the US. US State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley told reporters Wednesday, “I would not deny that we have plans to bring pirates who are responsible for attacks against our vessels back to the United States.” Crowley added that, “Kenya is reaching a capacity problem – challenge. So this is where all countries have to step up just as we are doing and take responsibility for pirates who have attacked their ships and prosecute them to the fullest extent of national law.”
In January, the International Chamber of Commerce International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reported that 2009 marked the worst year for maritime piracy in six years. The information indicated that the total reported incidents of piracy reached 406, surpassing 400 for the first time since 2003. Earlier that month, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a superseding indictment against alleged Somali pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, claiming that he led the takeover of two additional ships. Muse pleaded not guilty to the charges. In November, Somali judge Mohamed Abdi Aware, known for jailing suspected pirates, human traffickers, and Islamist insurgents, was shot dead while leaving a mosque in the Puntland city of Bossaso.

After the appapalooza that was Tuesday, you might find yourself disappointed by Wednesday’s app drop. Don’t be, not every day can be a rock star day. Granted, some new apps would have been nice…

Updated apps:

• Asphalt 5, $4.99
• Brothers In Arms®: Hour of Heroes, $4.99
• Deer Hunter 3D, $6.99
• Dungeon Hunter, $4.99
• Family Guy: Uncensored, $4.99
• Free Game Chess Clock Tournament, Free
• Guitar Hero 5, $6.99
• How to Train Your Dragon Mobile Game, $0.99
• iBored, $1.99
• Let’s Golf, $4.99
• Stickyman, $1.49
• Super KO Boxing! 2, $4.99
• World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend, $2.99

A sign outside a West Virginia vigil for coal miners who lost their lives in the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5 (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Charleston, W.Va. — Two weeks after the horrific explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Southern West Virginia, it’s business as usual for the owner of the project.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

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Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected make-shift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on-shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Such anecdotes aren’t easy to come by. Massey — the top coal producer in Appalachia — has built a reputation of intimidating its workers into a type of lock-step compliance that most often takes the form of silence, particularly when the subject revolves around safety in the company’s mines. The reason is clear: Massey is the economic engine in parts of West Virginia, and there’s a lingering fear among many workers that any grumbling could leave them unemployed. Some former employees said this week that the reluctance of Upper Big Branch miners to discuss the conditions inside those tunnels prior to the blast is no accident.

“I guarantee it: Massey’s already told these guys, ‘Hey, don’t say nothin’. You’re not talking to no reporters. You’re not saying nothin’ about our safety record — or you won’t have a job,’” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “That’s the way they operate.”

Still, Massey’s history of safety violations — including hundreds racked up at its other Appalachian projects in the last two weeks alone — has raised plenty of eyebrows in Washington in the wake of this month’s disaster. The White House, which had responded to the blast by vowing to reinspect the country’s most problematic mines, released a list of those projects Wednesday. At least eight of the 57 mines are Massey-owned.

Still, there’s evidence that, around the Upper Big Branch, Blankenship’s idea of running the company properly is rubbing some miners’ families the wrong way.

Some residents, for example, had kept vigil candles burning until all 29 miners were discovered. Now they’re keeping them lit until another milestone is reached: They’ll keep them burning, the Massey miner’s wife said, “until there’s justice.”

Jim submitted this story about a paramedic who left a thumb drive containing child pornography plugged into a shared computer. A coworker later found the files on the thumb drive, and the owner of the drive was brought up on charges for the offending files.

Obviously child pornography is a serious crime and needs to be stopped; that’s not the issue that is in question here. As law professor Orin Kerr points, out, the concern here is whether or not looking through the contents of an inadvertently plugged in thumb drive constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure and a violation of our fourth amendment rights. In this case, United States v. Durdley, the district court ruled that leaving a thumb drive in a shared computer removed an expectation of privacy since no extraordinary means were necessary to access those files:

Durdley’s files were exposed to anyone who sat down at the computer station who used the traditional means for opening and viewing files (such as Windows Explorer and the My Computer icon). Johnson encountered the files without employing any special means or intruding into any area which Durdley could reasonably expect to remain private once he left the drive attached to the common-use computer. The Court concludes, therefore, that Mr. Durdley had no more reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the thumb drive once he attached it to the common-use computer than the defendant in King did in his drive once he attached it to the airbase network.

Kerr disagrees with the ruling, and equates leaving a thumb drive plugged into a shared computer to leaving luggage in a bus terminal:

I think the social norm is that when you see a private person’s thumb drive on a shared-use computer, it’s understood that you’re invading that person’s privacy if you start clicking around to see what the files are. It’s kind of like someone leaving their luggage in the waiting room of a bus station. If the owner leaves the luggage behind for some reason, no one would see that as a waiver of privacy rights in the luggage or an invitation to unzip the luggage and look around.

It’s hard to see how opening someone else’s luggage is remotely close to looking at files on a thumb drive. Whereas luggage has clear physical boundaries, once a thumb drive is part of a file system, those barriers no longer exist. After all, when a thumb drive is plugged into a PC, it appears as a drive under “My Computer” and looks very similar to the other drives attached to the computer. So, if we really want a real-world analogy, a more appropriate one would be an open suitcase in a public bus station. Sure, while it’s kind of nosy to peek inside, things in plain view have long been understood to not be protected under the fourth amendment.

So, the moral of the story is, if you have files you don’t want people looking at, it’s best to not leave your thumb drives plugged into shared computers. Even better, don’t have illegal files in the first place.

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1 million Pakistanis fleeing from fighting remain in overcrowded camps, depending on emergency relief to survive. Caroline Gluck talks to people in the camps and looks at Oxfam’s cash-for work programmes in the community.

Girls at Jalozai camp. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

I met Marhaba, who introduced herself as a widow and mother of four young children, at Jalozai camp, near the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

She told me that she’d been forced to abandon her home in Upper Dir, north-western Pakistan, during intense fighting and shelling a year ago.  As families fled in terror, she became separated from her husband. “I call myself a widow now,” she explained. “I have no idea if my husband is dead or alive.”

Marhaba has ended up living on a site that now houses almost a quarter of a million people: a vast city of plastic tents. Jalozai first opened three decades ago, providing shelter to Afghan refugees fleeing into Pakistan to escape fighting. But more recent arrivals have come from Pakistan’s Swat Valley and other regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

More than 3 million displaced

Last year, more than 3 million people fled their homes amid military operations in the Swat Valley and surrounding areas, in what was one of the largest and fastest displacements in Pakistan’s recent history. It triggered a major humanitarian response.

But almost a year on, more than 1 million Pakistanis remain uprooted, depending on emergency relief to survive. More than 200,000 have been freshly displaced in recent months by military offensives in tribal areas of Pakistan. While some live in overcrowded camps, the majority have received no official help. They are forced to rent or stay with friends or relatives.

Most, like Marhaba, left their homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. “We fled our village barefoot,” she told me, saying it took two nights of travel to reach the safety of the camp.

Daily life is still a struggle. While she has a domicile card, Marhaba doesn’t have her husband’s identity card and that can make it hard to access food and other help from the camp authorities. She often has to wait last in line, hoping for leftovers or help from her brothers-in-law and their families.

Like many, she’s heard that her village has been badly damaged, and she’s reluctant to return to an uncertain future. She’s also not entirely convinced the situation is safe for her children to return.

The government is keen for people to return home. It has recently declared several areas safe and wants families to move back. But many people I talked to in the camps were reluctant, knowing that basic services like electricity, water and hospitals have been destroyed. Opportunities to work are also scarce. And they have received no compensation for their destroyed or damaged houses and livelihoods.

A forgotten crisis

Building a new well in Sijburn village. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Oxfam has been working with many returnee families, running cash-for work programmes so that people can earn some money working on projects that can also benefit the community, like building wells and roads. It is also helping farmers, providing agricultural inputs, tools, cows and goats.

But Oxfam, like many other leading humanitarian agencies, is also sounding an alarm bell: funding for emergency work is drying up. Less than one-third of an emergency fund to help those affected by the crisis has been funded by international donors, and some programmes may have to close.

Pakistan is in danger of becoming a forgotten crisis. And the future remains uncertain for those like Marhaba, now living a hand-to-mouth existence, who prays for things to get better.

Displaced Pakistanis talk about life at Jalozai camp.

Where we work: Pakistan

Remember when phones actually had handsets attached to a cord that made it comfortable to spend hours on a call? No? Well, believe me, such things existed.

Now Novophone lets you experience the glory of yesteryear with their Retro Handset that plugs into your cellphone.

Will you look slightly ridiculous talking into an old-fashioned receiver plugged into your mobile phone? Sure, but you’ll have clearer sounding calls and won’t have to worry about that pesky cellphone radiation.

The Retro Handset – available in red, black, and blue – will run you $27.95 and can be purchased at the Novophone website.

Related posts:

1. Land Rover Creates World’s Toughest Cell Phone
2. Have Phone Sex With Lost’s Evangeline Lilly
3. A Stereo Headset that Vibrates with the Music

There’s a shakeup headed for Seaside Heights, if a new report from The New York Post’s PageSix Column is to be believed. Although producers deny it, we hear MTV is looking to trim the fat on the upcoming third season its breakout reality smash Jersey Shore — and that could very well include ditching some of the fist-pumpin’ guidos and guidettes that make up the show’s cast.

While audience faves Snooki, Pauly D, and The Situation are all reportedly on board for a third installment of the docu-soap that shot them to reality infamy, the network is considering replacing the other Shore regulars — Ronnie Magro, Sammi Giancola, Jenni “J-Woww” Farley, and Vinny Guadagnino — with a crop of new and even more “outrageous” characters, the Big Apple tabloid reports.

No word on what will happen to former castoff Angelina Pivarnick, who recently returned to Jersey Shore after leaving three episodes into the first season

Modern web browsers such as Firefox are pretty secure. Unfortunately, even the very latest browsers won’t identify all potentially dangerous websites. Most people are aware that not all sites can be trusted, but are you aware visiting one may cause you to receive unwanted emails and, in some cases, they may even be used to send spam or ship adware with downloads. The only real solution is to identify these harmful sites or pages before it’s too late.

McAfee SiteAdvisor 3 for Firefox is an add-on that enables users to identify dangerous pages or sites by using a traffic light style warning system. Green signifies trusted sites, yellow for sites that may send unwanted mail and red for sites they may infect your PC with spam or adware. There is also an Internet Explorer version available.

McAfee SiteAdvisor 3 link.

It’s not just 3D gaming that the PS3 will be offering soon. Major League Baseball will apparently be streamed live to consoles by the end of this week, but if you’ve got grand ideas of free baseball, think again. More »