Blog

Lexus has announced a solution to the faulty stability control system which resulted in the recall of the latest GX 460 luxury SUV. Lexus says the fix is available effective immediately at dealers nationwide.

The Lexus GX 460 first faced scrutiny in early April when Consumer Reports discovered an unsafe reaction to high-speed maneuvers due to a failing vehicle stability control system. Now, after extensive testing by Lexus engineers, a solution has been found and distributed to Lexus dealers.

“I’m happy to announce that an update for the 2010 GX 460 vehicle stability control system is now available at Lexus dealers nationwide. Our dealers began contacting customers yesterday offering to make arrangements to perform the update, and we expect them to get in touch with most GX owners within one week,” said Mark Templin, vice president and general manager, Lexus.

Lexus had temporarily halted production and sales the SUV while it investigated the issue and worked on a solution. the luxury brand says that it will now begin resuming sales with the fix applied.

“With the revision now in place, we are also resuming sales of the 2010 GX 460. We are confident that the update will make the performance of the GX even better for our customers,” said Templin.

Lexus released a video during their testing that demonstrated the way the GX 460 behaved as cited by Consumer Reports, as well as how the vehicle now performs with the software update to the vehicle stability control system.

Source: Leftlane

An independent expert panel organized by the NIH released yesterday a thoughtful report on the state of the science for prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive decline. The report, available here, summarizes the panel’s review by saying:

• “Firm conclusions cannot be drawn about the association of modifiable risk factors with cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”
• “There is insufficient evidence to support the use of pharmaceutical agents or dietary supplements to prevent cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease. However, ongoing additional studies including (but not limited to) antihypertensive medications, omega-3 fatty acid, physical activity, and cognitive engagement may provide new insight into the prevention or delay of cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

To put findings in perspective, let me suggest our article Brain maintenance: it’s about cognitive enhancement first, Alzheimer’s delay second. Before people get scared away by the sentence “there is nothing we know of that can prevent Alzheimer’s Disease”, everyone should understand that this is true but different from saying “there is nothing we can do to reduce the probability from developing AD symptoms” or “there is nothing we can do today to enhance our cognitive functions today and tomorrow” (both areas with solid research and useful guidelines and tools). I gave a talk yesterday during the San Francisco Mini Medical School organized by California Pacific Medical Center/ Sutter Health, and making this distinction clear was in fact my main point.

The report provides great reading and several excellent recommendations for future research, including several areas we identified during the January SharpBrains Summit as areas where database-driven automated cognitive assessments are likely to add much value both to research and to clinical practice in years to come:

• “An objective and consensus-based definition of mild cognitive impairment needs to be developed, including identification of the cognitive areas of impairment, the recommended cognitive measures for assessment, and the degree of deviation from normal to meet diagnostic criteria. This consistency in definition and measurement is important to generate studies that can be pooled or compared to better assess risk factors and preventive strategies for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.”
• “A standardized, well-validated, and culturally sensitive battery of outcome measures needs to be developed and used across research studies to assess relevant domains of cognitive functioning in a manner that is appropriate for the functional level of the population sample being studied (e.g., cognitively normal, mild cognitive impairment); and age-gender specific norms need to be established for comparison and objective assessment of disease severity. We recommend a comprehensive approach to outcomes assessment that accounts for the impact of cognitive decline on other multiple domains of function and quality of life that may be affected by deficits in cognition (for example, emotional and physical functioning) of both the affected person and his or her primary caregiver.”
• “A simple, inexpensive, quantitative instrument to assess mild cognitive impairment, which can be administered in a repeated manner by trained (nonexpert) staff in both the primary care office and the research/specialty clinic, needs to be established. This instrument should be sensitive to changes over time across a wide range of cognitive abilities and social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. The development and widespread implementation of this instrument is essential to enable better research.”

To read report: click Here

Students in an executive certificate program at Rutgers this summer will be equipped with an Apple iPad tablet that includes pre-loaded program materials.

[Source: Campus Technology]

Posted by John Byrne at 3:14 p.m.



Mayor Richard Daley put the city’s sausage on the line today, wagering a smorgasbord of Chicago food with his Vancouver counterpart that the Blackhawks will beat the Canucks in a playoff series that starts Saturday night.

 

A hundred Vienna Beef hot dogs and a hundred polish sausages are among the local delicacies riding on the backs of a team Daley said represents the values of Chicago.
 


"This is a working city, an immigrant city, and there’s just something about the Blackhawks that inspires everyone out there," Daley said. "They work at it. They give a hundred percent on the ice, and that’s what Chicago’s all about."

 

The mayor was joined by Blackhawks officials at City Hall next to a table heaped with Eli’s cheesecake, BJ’s Market grilled turkey legs, buckets of Garrett’s popcorn and other edibles.

 

Daley also took a shot at the policies of departed Hawks owner Bill Wirtz, who did not allow the team’s games to be televised locally.

 

"The fans are there, whether you’re there or watching it on TV, which is sensational, because for many years it was not on TV. That alone has opened the sport to many, many people, who never had the opportunity to see it on TV," Daley said.

The mayor said he has not heard what Vancouver’s mayor will put on the line.

The friendly wager between mayors might be the most cordial thing about the Western Conference semifinal series — the Blackhawks and Canucks have an intense feud that dates back to last year when Chicago eliminated Vancouver in the playoffs.

Here’s the full list: Two deep dish Connie’s sausage pizzas; 100 Vienna Beef hot dogs and 100 Polish sausages; Azteca Foods shells, tortillas and tortilla chips; Garrett’s six-and-a-half gallon caramel and cheese popcorn mix; 800 Golden Dragon fortune cookies; a case of Half Acre Brewery pale ale and a case of golden ale; three gift packs of Robinson’s barbecue sauce; a floral arrangement from Illinois Specialty Cut Flowers; fried catfish, turkey legs and barbecued turkey tips from BJ’s Market; and a large Eli’s cheesecake.

When DLC and other such content come around, PS3 and PSP owners would have to wait for a Thursday to get their hands on the new goods. We’ve already told you about this, but considering it’s the

There is an overreliance on property taxes, and one way cities and towns can diversify revenue is by getting a cut of the state’s hotel tax, says the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

The organization, which represents cities and towns throughout the state, is pushing for the passage of House Bill No. 5483, which currently sits on the House calendar. The bill would increase the hotel tax from 12 percent to 15 percent. It would also allow cities and towns to receive a portion of the revenue collected from the state hotel tax.

One-third of the increased hotel revenue would go to revenues where the hotels that collected the tax are located and two-thirds would go to regional planning organizations on a pro rata basis.

The Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates that the hotel tax increase would generate an additional $9.4 million in fiscal year 2010-2011 and $18.8 million in fiscal year 2011-2012 for cities and towns and regional planning organizations.

An increase in revenue could help cities and towns help offset state aid cuts and prevent property tax increases or service reductions, CCM says. It could also help foster cooperation between communities, the group says.  

CCM reports that Connecticut is one of only nine states that do not have some sort of local hotel tax. Nearby Massachusetts has a local tax rate of up to 6 percent. Rhode Island has a 1 percent local hotel tax.

House Bill No. 5383 was passed by both the planning and development and the finance, revenue and bonding committees last month.

QWERTY fans rejoice. LG has been telling us for awhile they would launch an Android phone in the United States and it looks like that will finally happen this summer.

BGR is reporting that Verizon Wireless will begin selling the LG Aloha this coming May. This phone has many codenames in different countries, but it appears to be the Snapdragon slider we got a look at earlier this month. The device is said to feature Android 2.1, a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video capture, and slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

If Verizon pulls this deal off, it will solidify their position as the top U.S. carrier for high-end Android phones. They were the first to launch an Android 2.0 phone when the Motorola Droid debuted last year and were the first to offer a 1 GHz Android phone in retail stores with the new Droid Incredible.

Will we finally get a Snapdragon slider?

Related Posts

• LG Android phone appears in Verizon’s system
• LG Eclipse LU2300: The Snapdragon slider you have been waiting for?
• The Droid Incredible is sold out online
• QWERTY is king for U.S. Android buyers
• Verizon Droid Incredible now on sale for special online price

A dying comedian’s cremation urn is being customized to bring us some very “enlightening” messages from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The animal rights group has forked over $200 to place ads blasting KFC and dog breeders on the urn that will hold the remains of Aaron Jamison. The Springfield, Oregon man, who is terminally-ill with colon cancer, offered the ad space earlier this month to help his wife cover his funeral costs.

“I’m on different chemo now,” says Jamison, who has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease that’s now attacking his liver and lymph nodes. “If it works, I’ve got about nine months. If it doesn’t work, I’ve got three. So I’m trying to get on the ball with the ad sales.”

The PETA ads will read “I’ve Kicked the Bucket-Have You? Boycott KFC” and “People Who Buy Purebred Dogs Really Burn Me Up. Always Adopt.”

Although Aaron is very much in on this joke, the whole thing just seems a bit low — even for PETA. Exploiting a dying man’s need for cash to further your own annoying agenda? Couldn’t they have just donated some money and called it a day? Somewhere in their crusade for animal rights, this group has forgotten about the ethical treatment of humans….

by Deborah Pearlstein

Still catching up on yesterday’s news that DOD released the much-anticipated 2010 edition of the Manual for Military Commissions (MMC). The Manual is here.

Among its many provisions of interest (I’m still skimming) are the rules set forth for prosecutions for the commission crime of material support for terrorism – a crime I and others have argued does not exist as a war crime under international law. (None of the major international criminal tribunals have included it as an offense, for example; neither is there any evidence of its existence as a criminal offense under customary international law.) Given this, the singular international law defense for the inclusion of the “material support” offense in the 2009 version of the Military Commissions Act I’ve been able to imagine is the possibility that it would be used as some version of the expansive theory of vicarious contemplated at some level by the ICTY. (In my final international law class of the year, for example, I happened to teach Furundzija – a 1998 ICTY case finding that a soldier could be prosecuted under a vicarious liability theory for giving “practical assistance, encouragement, or moral support that had a substantial effect” on the perpetration of a war crime committed, provided that the soldier had the requisite intent. It’s debatable what intent was in fact required in that case, but it was either knowledge that one’s actions would assist perpetrator OR intent to facilitate the crime – hardly a meaningless difference.) One might have argued that the MCA offense of “material support” could mitigate the international law problems if deployed, against odds, in this way.

The MCA itself defines the offense as either (1) providing “material support” (a term it defines) “knowing or intending” that it will be used “in preparation for, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism,” or (2) intentionally providing material support to an international terrorist organization engaged in hostilities against the United States if he knows that organization engages in terrorism. By its terms, one might imagine option (1) was crafted to cover the bases in Furundzija; indeed “material support” under the statute doesn’t include something as vague as the “moral support” Furundzija recognized (in a rape case), so perhaps in this respect an intent-based a prosecution could survive. Option (2), on the other hand, seems less likely to survive Furundzija’s more exacting intent requirement. It requires intent only as to the provision of money to the organization; it doesn’t require that the supporter intend that the organization use the support to facilitate or carry out terrorism (only that the supporter have knowledge that the organization has ever engaged in such activities).

So does the MMC provide clarification or cure? In a word – no. It clarifies at least that the charging conduct must take place “in the context of and … associated with hostilities.” This seems a sine qua non for a war crimes charge – it’s not a war crime if there’s not a war – that wasn’t entirely clear by the terms of the statute itself. On the other hand, the MMC preserves knowledge as a potential basis for prosecution for material support for an act of terrorism, and preserves knowledge as the singular basis for prosecution for support to a terrorist organization. In other words, material support could still just be a knowledge-based offense. If Furundzija is in fact the model, and if Furundzija’s more exacting “intent to facilitate” standard applies, then no knowledge-based prosecution could survive. Seems like yet another of many potential issues as these cases are brought and appealed. In the meantime, I hope those international criminal law experts out there will tell me what I’m getting wrong.

The Droid Incredible by HTC is available today on the Verizon network in the U.S. and one just showed up at my door. I have not had time to play with it enough to talk intelligently about it so these photos will have to tide you over until I do. I can say one thing with certainty — this thing is FAST. Make that two things — this is the best phone on the Verizon network.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Google’s Mobile Strategy: Understanding the Nexus One

In just five years, a Russian venture capital firm has amassed quite a portfolio of the Internet’s hottest companies.

Digital Sky Technologies said this week it is taking the ICQ instant messaging service off of AOL’s hands for $187.5 million, but it isn’t the first time the small, four-partner firm has made social media headlines. Last May, DST bought a $300 million stake in Facebook. The company was also the key investor when social game maker Zynga raised $180 million in December and social coupon site Groupon raised $135 million this month.

So who’s behind DST? The New York Times offered a partial answer in December:

Alisher Usmanov, a Russian industrialist billionaire who spent six
years in an Uzbek jail for fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s (he was
later cleared by a Soviet court), owns 35 percent of D.S.T. Mr. Usmanov
has said he was jailed for political reasons.

Tencent, China’s largest Internet company, also said it would buy a 10 percent share of DST earlier this month and Goldman Sachs, where two of DST’s four partners worked, is a minority shareholder. A South African media firm, Naspers, also owns stakes both in Tencent and one of DST’s websites, The Economist reported, though what all the ties mean isn’t exactly clear.

Another nagging question is how a small Russian firm landed such major deals. The answer is that DST just isn’t as demanding as its peers, writes VentureBeat’s Kim-Mai Cutler, who asked around and last week offered up a seven-point list of reasons behind DST’s success. That list includes forgoing getting seats on a company’s board of directors, demanding fewer rights, turning deals around quickly and paying departing founders and early employees generously.

Those payouts are key to the company’s model, writes Silicon Alley Insider editor Nicholas Carlson, who credits DST’s billionaire-CEO with developing a “clever strategy that’s changing the way tech companies grow up.” Some startup managers try to delay initial public offerings to get more experience before subjecting themselves to quarterly analysis, Carlson writes, but employees and investors are not so patient. That’s where DST swoops in:

DST solves this problem for entrepreneurs by coming in and buying stock from these early investors and employees at very high valuations. DST also buys some new stock from in the startups themselves.

Whatever the business model is, it seems to be serving the company well. According to Bloomberg, DST plans to spend over “$1 billion on social media over the next five years and is monitoring 50 global companies for investment opportunities.”

Over the last two decades, there have been few, if any, academic institutions that have not built new classrooms and integrated advanced classroom technology in them. Many of these undertakings have been successful, in the sense that the faculty, students, and administration thought that the technology was useful, that it worked as expected, and, that both teaching and learning goals were met in the new facilities.

It is likely that the vast majority of advanced technology classroom projects succeed in some measure, though far too many fall short of fully meeting the expectations of those who envisioned, funded, and built them. And there are several ways in which advanced technology classrooms can disappoint users.

[Source:Campus Technologyy]

Posted by Rick Pearson at 3:02 p.m.

SPRINGFIELD—Republican governor candidate Sen. Bill Brady today said he will not revisit the issue of the way he released income-tax information to the public last week and defended his decision not to release copies of his tax returns.

Brady’s campaign allowed reporters to view and take notes off them during a three-hour period at his Springfield campaign headquarters last Friday. Today, the Republican state senator from Bloomington said he didn’t offer actual copies of his return because he didn’t want competitors to his home-building business waving them at prospective home buyers.

Brady’s tax information showed that he paid no federal income taxes in 2008, based on a loss of $116,679 and paid no federal tax last year because of the effects of losses and a federal stimulus tax break on his adjusted gross income of $119,910.



Speaking to reporters after an appearance at a Sangamon County Republican luncheon, Brady was asked why he made the decision to choose Springfield for viewing his tax information instead of the much larger media center of Chicago.



“I think we’ve often criticized governors for not living in Springfield, not being in the state capital,” Brady said, referring to complaints raised about disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s avoidance of Springfield. “We picked a location–the state of Illinois’ capital.”



Brady said no reporters who viewed his tax returns said they needed more than the three hour time period he allotted. But he said those calling for him to release copies of his tax returns, as many politicians do, don’t “understand the competitive nature of my business.”



“I have business partners. We’re in a retail business. We’re in a business where we sit down and we try to sell a home to people, and I don’t feel it’s proper that my competitors should have a copy of my tax returns that they’re going to show people when we’re negotiating about whether or not we’re going to build them a home or not,” Brady said.



Brady, however, had no problems touting his business during his talk to Sangamon County Republicans. He noted Brady Homes is involved with two subdivisions in Sangamon County “if you’re looking for a new house,” and touted a federal tax credit for home purchases that expires at the end of this month.”



“Just a little plug. Brady Homes is the name of that company, if you didn’t know. Help build the economy,” Brady said. Later, he told reporters that it was “important people know I’m a businessman who is struggling just like most businesses I talk to in Illinois.”

DJIA: Up 122 points to 11,167.

NASDAQ: Up 40 points to 2511.

S&P 500: Up 15 points to 1206.

Commodities:
Oil: Up 2.5% or $2.07 to $85.29 a barrel.
Gold: Down 0.3% or $4.20 to $1167.60 an ounce.
Silver: Down 2.1% or $0.38 to $18.52 an ounce.

Now here’s what you need to know as you leave work today:

• Dendreon (DNDN) gets its prostate cancer drug, Provenge, approved by the FDA. Shares were up 26% at the close.
• Senator Carl “Shitty” Levin is looking to ban banks from participating in proprietary trading.
• The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to worsen and has lowered both BP and Transocean’s market cap significantly.
• Analyst Dave Rosenberg tells us that Greece is going to default no matter what happens.
• Tim Geithner and the Treasury vow to crack down on mortgage servicers. Could this be the end of subprime as we know it?

Join the conversation about this story »

A whole bunch of people have sent in variations on this story, which involves scientist Michael Mann, one of the main figures involved in the recent (misleading and totally blown out of proportion) controversy over climate change research, threatening legal action against people who made a satire video, which includes his image. Honestly, it’s hard to think of a move more likely to backfire than this. His lawyers should have done everything in their power to talk him out of making such a threat. Think about it:

• You have groups who want publicity making fun of him
• These groups also want a legal battle with him where they might be able to gather additional info from him
• They made a clearly legally protected video

Sending a legal threat here not only doesn’t work, because the legal basis is suspect, but it plays perfectly into the hands of those who made the video in the first place. No matter what you think of Mann’s work, it’s hard not to think that it’s an incredibly dumb thing to threaten legal action in this situation. The actual cease & desist letter also raises some legal threats that have little basis in the law. It threatens the group that posted the video for using Dr. Mann’s likeness, claiming that it was pulled off the Penn State website, and “is not authorized, and infringes on various copyrights.” First of all, merely making use of a publicity photo in the video is unlikely to actually infringe on anyone’s copyrights, but more to the point, it almost certainly does not infringe on Mann’s copyrights. If anyone holds a copyright on that image, it would be the photographer who took the image or (more likely) Penn State. The lawyers do cc a photographer — so perhaps they’re suggesting he holds the copyrights, but they make no claim that they represent him.

Either way, it’s hard not to see the video as protected free speech. The use of his likeness is not (as the letter claims) for commercial purposes, but to mock him. It clearly hurts his feelings, but that’s not illegal. The claims of defamation are also ridiculous. Even if you believe that Mann’s infamous comments were taken out of context, there’s a widespread discussion over what happened with the data in question, and arguing that it’s defamatory to make such a claim is a stretch.

Yet again, we see a legal cease & desist threat being used not for an actual legal reason, but because someone doesn’t like something on the internet… and the result, in true “Streisand Effect” fashion, is to call significantly more attention to the content they hoped would disappear. This video wasn’t going to convince people one way or the other in this debate. People who want to believe that climate change data was falsified were going to believe it no matter what. Those who feel otherwise aren’t going to have their mind changed by a silly video. Threatening legal action does nothing but draw more attention to the the issue.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

In the last 3 years, car sharing services such as ZipCar have seen tremendous growth. According to some estimates, between 2007 and 2009 the industry saw a 117% increase in the number of users in North America. By 2016, that same study expects there to be 4.4 million car sharing users in North America and 5.5 million in Europe.

So it’s no surprise that the number of players in the car sharing world has been increasing at a breakneck pace. And now the next step in its evolution seems to be coming to fruition: renting your own personal car out to complete strangers for a price you set but through an online service that organizes the whole thing.

Known as personal car sharing or distributed car sharing, the concept is very intriguing… and runs somewhat contrary to how many people view their cars.

(more…)

Saab has lined up a couple of interesting new models, with the new 2012 Saab 9-5 Wagon, also known as the SportCombi, the most interesting to make it to the market. A fresh image of the commuter has surfaced courtesy of a sales presentation and the leaked image reveals the sleek design with a distinctive profile. It gets sloping C pillars which will, by all means, reduce the luggage capacity of the estate wagon and it will hold 540 liters of cargo with the seats folded down. The wagon will share the engine from its sedan variant which runs on three options — 162 kW turbocharged 2.0-liter petrol, a 118 kW 2.0-liter turbodiesel, and a turbocharged 2.8-liter V6 with 221 kW output. The 2012 Saab 9-5 Wagon will probably break cover at the Paris Motor Show later this year.

Among all the hype of the Palm buyout, it’s good to see that Palm can stay focused and still be churning out some updates for webOS. The update is intended to fix some known, very annoying issues, and improve overall performance. This update is nothing to write home about, but it is an update to refine an already beautiful OS. The full changelog as listed on Verizon’s software update site is listed below.

Enhancements:

• Easier to use Bluetooth.®
  • Improved battery life when turning off Bluetooth without unpairing a device.
• Displayed time feature is more accurate.
  • Automatic updates for Daylight Saving Time.
• Easier connection management.
  • More consistent EV-DO connections when switching from Wi-Fi to CDMA.
• Better Touchstone™ charger integration.
  • The screen will now turn off and display the lock icon and time after the Pixi Plus is docked with the Touchstone charger.
• Newly taken photos and videos do not overwrite existing ones.
  • Improved picture display when cropping a picture for a contact.

Improvements:

• Pinch to zoom now works in more applications.
• The onscreen volume slider now appears correctly.
• The forward gesture now works in the browser.
• The back gesture now returns to the file list screen in certain applications.
• The shutter sound is more responsive when taking a picture.
• A single press of the power button now reliably wakes up the display.
• The LCD reset issue has been resolved.

To update your Verizon Wireless webOS device manually, run the ‘Updates’ application. Otherwise, your phone will automatically update over the next 48 hours. If you have already updated your Pre Plus or Pixi Plus and notice some differences not stated, feel free to share them with us!

Via Engadget
Download: Pre Plus | Pixi Plus