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Eu não sei dizer se esse é um problema que todos os alunos correm o risco de passar, ou se o carro é muito pequeno para pessoas “pé de chumbo” que ainda não tem noção do que faz. Enfim, é para isso que servem as auto escolas, para ensinar. Só que alguns micos podem acontecer às vezes.

Uma aluna não muito habilidosa teve o azar de capotar um Fiat 500 em sua segunda aula. Ao menos sabemos que habilidade para dublê ela tem. A aluna se chama Krisztina Jaksa, e perdeu o controle do Fiat 500 em sua segunda aula enquanto tentava fazer uma curva onde o carro inexplicavelmente travou as rodas. no desespero, a garota de 24 anos confundiu os pedais e pisou no acelerador ao invés dos freios, e resultou no que aparece na foto acima.

Depois do susto, ninguém se feriu, nem Krisztina nem seu instrutor, Glen Berley, que sairam do 500 capotado com apenas alguns arranhões. Não se sabe muita coisa sobre a aluna, mas parece que ela irá retornar as aulas, já que havia se matriculado há poucos dias.

Via | Top Speed

The Harvard Foundation presented the 2010 Scientist of the Year Award to Paula T. Hammond, the Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of its annual Albert Einstein Science Conference: Advancing Minorities and Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Hammond will be honored for her outstanding scientific contributions in macromolecular design and synthesis of biomaterials. “The Harvard Foundation is pleased to honor Dr. Hammond as the 2010 Scientist of the Year at our annual Albert Einstein Science Conference,” said S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation.

Hammond was also a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004.

To read more about Hammond’s research, visit the Hammond Research Group Web site.

Oglesby Paul was a towering figure in the field of internal medicine and cardiology. He was born in Milton, MA and attended Milton Academy, Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.  After his training in internal medicine and cardiology, Paul took a fellowship with the best known cardiologist in the world, Dr. Paul Dudley White at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In this role he saw patients with and for Dr. White; he helped in the annual course in cardiology for physicians from all over the world; and he learned the standards of physical examination and history taking that best underlay that specialty.

Oley left a promising career in Boston to move to Chicago. The next chapter of his career was a combination of private practice, teaching, and service at the Central Free Dispensary of Presbyterian Hospital, later Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital, in Chicago.  He was a leader in clinical cardiology, answering consultations for some of the most distinguished citizens and “… making diagnoses that nobody else could.” When mitral valvuloplasty introduced the era of cardiac surgery, Oley monitored patients in the operating room for the pioneering surgeon Egbert Fell.  He was similarly involved in the OR when heart-lung surgery was pioneered at Presbyterian Hospital.

Paul moved to Passavant Hospital and Northwestern Medical School in the early sixties. There he combined the positions of Chief of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and Vice President for Health Sciences. His influence was felt throughout the institution and he received numerous awards and recognitions for clinical and teaching excellence. His colleagues in these years described him as fair-minded, thoughtful, complex and formal. He was especially considerate of younger physicians.

Oley Paul was a regular contributor to research in cardiology.  In the 1950’s he headed a group of 25 physicians in the Western Electric Study that became a milestone in relating cardiac histories and hypertension to the stresses of the work environment. In 1964, he presented an epochal study on the Natural History of Hypertension to an international Symposium on the epidemiology of hypertension. And in the 1970’s he led the Medical Risk Factors Intervention Trial, one of the first large scale epidemiologic studies to test the role of modifying risk factors in reducing the complications of hypertension and atherosclerosis.

Among the honors he received was the Presidency of the American Heart Association and the Chairmanship of the Subspecialty Board of Cardiology, the first of the subspecialty boards organized by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

In 1977 the new Dean of Harvard Medical School, Daniel C. Tosteson, invited Paul to become Director of Admissions. Paul accepted this role and its immediate responsibility, Chair of the Committee on Admissions. In view of the large number of Harvard graduates who become house staff and later go on to faculty positions, this committee is in some ways the most important one in the school.  He brought to the role his usual high standards.

Oglesby Paul sometimes attracted, and did not shrink from controversy. At Northwestern Medical School Oley proposed a revised organization for the private service at the major teaching hospital. The staff discussion was intense and polarized and the change never took place. At Harvard Medical School, as Director of Admissions, he proposed that the full admissions committee could provide the excellence of decision making needed to keep the extraordinarily successful affirmative action program going. This giant effort of Harvard Medical School began after the death of Martin Luther King and used a subcommittee to bring intense specialized judgment to the evaluation of minority students from non-traditional backgrounds. This proposal was also not adopted, but more than two decades later a version of Dr. Paul’s proposal was adopted as being more consistent with the evolving standards of the United States Supreme Court.

During this next phase of his career, post ordinary retirement, Paul was one of the emeritus professors of medicine whose presence graced Brigham Medical Rounds and enriched its teaching programs. He served as a clinical teacher for medical students and for cardiology fellows. All of them marveled at his reliance on history, physical examination, and simple tests to make difficult diagnoses and to establish relationships with patients whom he was ostensibly meeting only in teaching rounds. His long experience in cardiology and his personal learning in all of its many technical areas came into easy conjunction for these extraordinary teaching sessions.

Oley Paul’s contributions to HMS took many forms. He was a dedicated Class Agent who led by example and considered the Alumni Fund and its contributions to student welfare an outstanding philanthropy. He cooperated with Amalie Kass in a major campaign for renovating the Countway Library and preserving its medical manuscripts. He wrote a definitive biography of Paul Dudley White and a major tribute to Francis Peabody.

Oglesby Paul was married twice, his first wife Marguerite predeceased him in 1979 and left him two children, Rodman and Marnie. His second wife, Jean Paul brought three stepchildren to the union and there have since been three grandchildren and three step grandchildren. The second Mrs. Paul, herself a Mrs. Paul before their marriage, had kept an apartment in New York City when the two were married. After one year of the rigors of the admissions committee, she told Oley that unless he modified the committee’s approaches she was going to return to New York. Eager to preserve their union, Oley modified the procedures with no loss in excellence as a result. HMS, Dr. and Mrs. Paul, and the extended family all benefited from one more bit of Paul’s administrative genius. Dr. Paul will be remembered for this same genius in each of the institutions he served so well as teacher, administrator, researcher and outstanding physician.

Respectfully submitted,

Daniel D. Federman, MD, Chairman
Ronald A. Arky, MD
Eugene Braunwald, MD
Joseph V. Messer, MD

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on empowering young scientists and engineers with the freedom to innovate, has awarded Hertz Fellowships to 15 students for 2010-11. Two of the award-winners, Adam Marblestone, a Ph.D. candidate in the Harvard Biophysics Program, and Tony Pan, a theoretical astrophysics Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, are among the 15 national winners.

The award lasts up to five years of the recipients’ for their graduate studies. Since 1963, the Hertz Foundation has provided the nation’s most generous Ph.D. fellowships to more than 1,070 gifted applied scientists and engineers with the potential to change the world for the better. This year’s class of Hertz Fellows was selected from a pool of nearly 600 applicants, and winners were “chosen for their intellect, their ingenuity, and their potential to bring meaningful and lasting change to our society.”

More than 1,000 students packed into Sanders Theatre a few weeks ago for an event that was — as we called it in our original pitch materials — “something new and different.” The concept was simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker: “10 professors speak for 10 minutes each about their one big idea.” It was appropriately titled “Harvard Thinks Big,” and its production and success were the culmination of a year and a half of work by a team of Harvard undergraduates that included me.

Though much of the excitement surrounding “Harvard Thinks Big” in February can be explained by its scope — by the posters that emphasized “This is Harvard,” by marketing the session as a “buffet of Harvard thinking,” by the all-star professors on the bill — the cause of the excitement was something deeper, an element of truth that universities need to pay more attention to if they care about their research hitting home with students and the population at large, if they care about academia’s ability to generate passion and change the world for the better. The real reason behind the event’s success, and why so many students who had just had of long day of classes submitted themselves to two more hours of lecture, was a simple fact: Ideas excite people.

If you were in the crowd that night, or if you have viewed the videos online at www.HUTVnetwork.com/HarvardThinksBig, you didn’t just hear facts, figures, and data, or even just analyses, templates, and constructs. You heard ideas. Upon reading it put that way, you might have the same worries that others did when we first proposed the concept: that the night would be a “razzle-dazzlefication” of truth, that we were asking professors to (and I quote an original detractor) “dumb down their research into bite-sized chunks devoid of truth for the sake of shallow entertainment, feeding our already-too-short attention spans.”

True, we limited the talks to 10 minutes and asked professors to speak so that everyone in the audience could understand. (The literature professor never said “bildingsroman,” and the computer science professor never uttered the phrase “hardware-embedded hypervisor.”) We did that partly because we wanted the night to bring together various disciplines, to be relevant to all students watching, and, yes, to be fun and entertaining.

The real innovation of “Harvard Thinks Big” (and the West Coast “TEDTalks” that inspired it), though, is not that it made knowledge bite-size. It was that it made professors take their years of work and boil it down to its core, to find the driving force behind their passion for exploration, to find and share the answer to the lingering question: “Professor, what’s the takeaway? What’s the big idea?”

And what they shared was not “truth for dummies” or “truth, glamorized” or “truth, action-packed.” What they shared was an idea, a tremendously important form of veritas that has been lost to many in academia. Ideas are infused with passion. Ideas are often subjective and often have (gasp!) a spiritual element. Ideas are organized and poetic. Ideas are relevant. They take data and make it matter to people. All ideas, as English Professor Matthew Kaiser said that night, “start as emotion.”

Big ideas matter: Cooking is what made us human. Social networks have value. Appreciating religious pluralism is tremendously important to our coming century. Protest is the driving force behind American social change. Coding makes you see the real world differently. We should revolt from the king. An invisible hand drives the market. Workers of the world unite. DNA holds our genetic code. All men are created equal.

Ideas are indeed bite-sized, but — when released — fire the imagination.

True, some ideas have wreaked havoc, especially in the past century. But, more often than not, the excitement they spur has been used as a force for good. And in an age of rising youth apathy, the power of ideas (in their debating, debunking, and implementing) to draw out passion, drive, and excitement in people cannot be ignored.

The ideas of Harvard’s students and professors can be tapped more effectively. We need more opportunities to reflect on “the takeaway,” the thing to hold onto, the thing to fight for or against, the thing to experiment with, to debate, to get excited about. We need more forums to share ideas (and we hope “Harvard Thinks Big” was the first of many such sessions). Ideas need to have a larger university presence. That’s our takeaway, our own big idea: Ideas matter.

If you’re an undergraduate or graduate student and have an essay to share about life at Harvard, please e-mail your ideas to Jim Concannon, the Gazette’s news editor, at [email protected].

Ask babies who they are, and they’ll babble something that seems nonsensical. Turns out, they’re onto something.

Jerome Kagan, a developmental psychologist and the Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology Emeritus, has spent the past 30 years of his lengthy career studying the temperaments of those little people, which originate in a child’s unique biology, along with the experiences that shape their personalities. These discoveries are summarized in his new book, “The Temperamental Thread.”

Twenty percent of Kagan’s 4-month-old infant subjects were labeled high reactive, “a behavioral profile marked by vigorous motor activity and crying to unfamiliar experiences.” And 40 percent were labeled low reactive because they showed the opposite behaviors. Both temperaments are modest predictors of future personalities, depending on how children responded to their environments. (Another 40 percent belonged to neither group.)

“The high-reactive infants are biased to become children who are timid, shy, and cautious in unfamiliar situations. This is a personality trait known as inhibited,” said Kagan. “The low reactives are biased to develop into outgoing, spontaneous, fearless children — uninhibited.”

Kagan also explores links between temperament and gender, ethnicity, mental illness, and more. The difference between males and females is always newsworthy fodder, and, according to Kagan, “over the past 50 years, many scientists have discovered intriguing biological differences between males and females that imply different patterns of temperaments in girls and boys.”

“The most obvious are related to the molecules oxytocin and vasopressin, and the sex hormones. It appears that these molecules, in conjunction with others and experience, bias girls to care more about the quality of their social relationships and bias boys to care more about their potency and relative status with other males.”

Kagan said he’d always been curious about the mind and “the persistence of beliefs that are not in accord with experience,” and recalled arguing at a young age with his mother, who believed in inborn traits of personality.

“During the 1940s and ’50s, many citizens and social scientists believed that the main, if not the only, cause of the problems that plague our species were childhood experiences,” said Kagan. “This belief was an heir of Freudian ideas and the confidence of behaviorists, who were demonstrating the power of experience to shape animal behavior. It followed that anyone who discovered the specific experiences that led to a mental illness, crime, or school failure would be a hero doing God’s work. Who would not entertain the idea of becoming a child psychologist, given this Zeitgeist?”

Although retired, Kagan still enjoys collaborations with colleagues Nancy Snidman of Children’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Carl Schwartz, and has begun to write “a set of essays on some contemporary but controversial issues that surround the meanings and measurements of the concepts of happiness, morality, brain bases for psychological states, and mental illnesses.”

But what about Kagan’s baby subjects? Where are they now? “Infant temperaments act to limit what children will become; they do not guarantee a particular personality,” he noted.

“A life itinerary is like the game of ‘Twenty Questions.’ Each new piece of information eliminates a large number of possibilities, but many still remain.”

The academic options can seem endless at Harvard, where each course can appear more exciting and challenging than the last. For a student, choosing a concentration, as majors are called at the College, is an exhilarating but potentially overwhelming process. Fortunately, each spring the Advising Fortnight makes all the departments and academic choices at Harvard accessible to freshmen during a two-week series of advising events.

In Advising Fortnight, which started this year on April 5 and runs through April 18, Harvard’s 45 concentrations host information sessions, panels, and open houses where students learn about departments and committees.

“The primary goal of advising, in my opinion, is to help an advisee explore, contemplate, and ultimately decide on what they are really passionate about,” said Robert Lue, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology and director of life sciences education. “The best advising is not simply about the immediate next step, it is also about the pathway and the doors that may open or close along the way.”

Harvard College’s Advising Programs Office (APO) coordinates the logistics of all the events. Student input is essential to the Fortnight’s success, and the APO works with numerous undergrads to shape the format and programming and ensure that things run smoothly. Each concentration plans its own events to help students understand what a discipline studies and its methodologies.

Advising Fortnight kicked off with a buffet extravaganza on April 5 in Annenberg Hall. All of the concentrations were lined up in long rows on one side of the dining hall tables, and students could drop by to speak with advisers.

In addition to the concentration-specific events, the Fortnight also includes panel discussions with advisers from several departments covering broader fields such as the life sciences or the social sciences, so that students can compare different concentrations.

“I was looking at psychology or social studies, and I knew that I wanted to do something in that realm. The panels are invaluable, so students can understand the decisions that they are making, take ownership of their decisions, and enjoy the academic experience,” said Kristina Dominguez ’10, a sociology concentrator who worked with the APO to plan this year’s Fortnight. “College is about a lot of things, but you have to enjoy your academics because it’s a huge part of the experience.”

During the Fortnight, each first-year student must complete a required advising conversation. To do so, students participate in one of the concentration’s events or go to the concentration’s office hours to have a one-on-one conversation with an adviser. Advisers help students to narrow options and identify an area of study that sparks interest.

“We’d like students to come away with some idea of the structure of the program, but also with an idea of what we might call the culture of the English concentration, and how they might fit in,” said Daniel Donoghue, John P. Marquand Professor of English. “Our three sessions offer different perspectives — from alums, from current concentrators, from the English Undergraduate Office — with the hope that students can find the information they need to make their decisions.”

Advising Fortnight began five years ago, when the FAS faculty voted that concentration choice should take place during the first semester of the sophomore year, rather than the end of the freshman year. An amendment to that vote required students to have a “conversation” about choosing their concentration in the spring of freshman year. Because the Fortnight occurs at the end of the first year, and students choose their concentration the following fall, they still have time to plan and explore their options before making a final decision.

First-year students vary widely in their certainty regarding their future concentration. Even students who think they know what they will concentrate in often reconsider their decisions.

“Even though many students think they are going to do pre-med, it often changes after the first and second semester,” said Inge-Lise Ameer, assistant dean of Harvard College and interim director of the Advising Programs Office. “Even if they have decided on their concentration, there is a lot of decision making that goes on.”

Freshman students who are certain of their future concentration will still find the Fortnight helpful, participants said.

“I’ve been interested in psychology since the fourth grade, so today I’m interested in learning about lab work, thesis writing, and letters of recommendation,” said Esther Wu ’13 at the kickoff event. “I’ve also gotten advice on taking courses in other departments, which has opened my eyes to other possibilities.”

The Harvard College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (PBK), Alpha Iota of Massachusetts, elected 24 juniors at a private ceremony at Leverett House on April 13.

PBK was first established under a charter in 1779. Shifting from a social and debating club in its early years to an undergraduate honor society in the 19th century, PBK is known as the oldest academic honor society in the country.

Phi Beta Kappa’s national mission is to foster and recognize excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and election to Alpha Iota of Massachusetts signifies that an undergraduate has demonstrated excellence, reach, originality, and rigor in his or her course of study. The honor society recognizes students whose course work demonstrates not only high achievement, but also breadth of interest, depth of understanding, and intellectual honesty. Twenty-four juniors are elected each spring, 48 seniors each fall, and a further number sufficient to bring the total membership to no more than 10 percent of the graduating class in the final election shortly before Commencement.

Elected juniors include:

Cabot House: Sophie Cai, chemical and physical biology; Eli Jonathan Jacobs, social studies; and Rui Wang, economic.

Currier House: Meng Xiao He, molecular and cellular biology; Marsha Sukach, psychology; Pramod Thammaiah, applied math; and Helen Horan Yang, molecular and cellular biology.

Dunster House: Nicholas Oliver Bodnar, chemical and physical biology.

Eliot House: Darius Sinan Imregun, chemistry and physics; Arjun Ravi Ramamurti, social studies; and Allen Yang, economics.

Kirkland House: Sundeep Subramanian Iyer, government.

Leverett House: Lila Grace Brown, environmental science and public policy.

Lowell House: Alexander Sarkis Karadjian, special concentrations.

Pforzheimer House: Anne Lisbet Goetz, English; and Arnav Tripathy, math.

Quincy House: Edith Yee-Heen Chan, economics; and Marco Chan, Romance languages and literature.

Winthrop House: Ama Ruth Francis, literature; Nell Shapiro Hawley, history and literature; Taylor John Helgren, government; Christopher William Higgins, social studies; Jerry Lai Kung, applied math; and Iya Megre, classics.

A new chief executive officer has been appointed to head WWF-Australia, bringing strong ties to China and significant knowledge of Asia and the Pacific.

Dermot O’Gorman, who is currently the head of WWF-China, will replace Greg Bourne as WWF- Australia’s new CEO on August 1.

Mr O’Gorman, who grew up on the New South Wales south coast, brings broad national and international conservation experience to the role, reflecting WWF-Australia’s increasing engagement in regional conservation efforts.

Mr O’Gorman took over as the Country Representative of WWF-China in 2005, where based in Beijing, he has overseen the rapidly growing domestic and international program.

Among his achievements as head of WWF-China are the establishment of a climate adaptation and wetland protected area network for the whole Yangtze River basin, the protection of 1.6 million hectares of panda landscape, and the promotion of an initiative with Chinese banks to green China’s investment into Africa and other developing countries.

He first joined WWF in 1998, becoming the Head of Government and Aid Agency Partnerships for WWF-UK. In 2001, he moved to Fiji as WWF’s Regional Representative in the South Pacific, where he initiated the development of the Fiji Island and Bismarck Solomon Seas Ecoregion planning approach and also supported Pacific Islands on fisheries and whale conservation.

After a number of years in the Pacific, he moved to WWF International headquarters in Switzerland as the Deputy Director of WWF’s Asia Pacific Program, overseeing conservation efforts across the region and managing WWF’s partnership with the Asia Development Bank.

&qout;Dermot brings a vast amount of knowledge and experience both domestically and internationally to the role of WWF-Australia CEO,&qout; said WWF-Australia President Denis Saunders.

&qout;This exciting appointment will ensure the organisation is well placed to meet the growing environmental challenges facing our country and the region, from over-fishing to the creation of protected areas, species protection and climate change adaptation and mitigation,&qout; Mr Saunders continued.

Mr Bourne will leave WWF-Australia after nearly six years as Chief Executive Officer, during which time his considerable climate change policy and business leadership skills has helped position the organisation as a central voice in the climate change debate.

More information

Rachael Hoy, National Media Manager, WWF-Australia, 0407 204 594.

Sometimes a basic vinaigrette just won’t do. Sometimes we need a velvety, white dressing drizzled on our greens. And yet ranch is often a little, how do we say this, salad-bar-at-the-steakhouse? Occasionally, yes, we love it. But this dressing, well, this is a more oo-la-la, less yee-haw, creamy dressing. And it’s so, so easy.

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Filed under: Car Buying, Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Chevrolet, GM

Go to church on Sunday, sell on Monday? Well, not exactly, but General Motors will bring along the cream of its crop this Sunday, April 18, to the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church near Detroit, Michigan. For those interested in seeing the next wave of green technology, the procession will include the 2011 Chevrolet Volt.

The event is being sponsored by GM Minority Suppliers and Dealers, and the automaker says the purpose of the shindig is “to build new relationships in the community and highlight the contribution of minority suppliers and dealers to the community and local economy.”

We’re not sure how common this sort of thing is with GM, let alone with other automakers, but we have to wonder if some won’t find the event just a wee bit distasteful. That said, Reverend Dr. Charles G. Adams, pastor of the 10,000-member Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, says, “This is a wonderful opportunity to do something really special for Hartford church members. Something that has never been done at a church in Detroit.”

Any who wants to know more or who are thinking of attending can find all the official details in the press release pasted after the break.

[Source: Hartford Memorial Baptist Church]

Continue reading GM going to church to sell cars?

GM going to church to sell cars? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba’s got a new automotive HDD out today that’s packing 200GB of storage. Consider that your typical Ford today has just 40GB, and start planning all the music and movies and media that’ll be housed in your next car’s dashboard. More »

Assistant Director of Outreach & Community Partnership Coordinator
Educational Outreach

Smith College seeks an Assistant Director of Outreach & Community Partnership Coordinator to assist the directors in leading a collaborative campus effort to coordinate the College’s outreach and partnership efforts across departments, articulating the College’s mission on campus and to the broader community. In conjunction with the director and faculty co-director, this position facilitates the college’s interactions with schools and community organizations, with the goal of linking the research and teaching interests of Smith faculty and students to the needs, goals and opportunities of schools and communities.

DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES
Assistant Director of Outreach: Serves as the front-line source of information and logistical support for schools and community agencies seeking to access educational resources on the Smith College campus. Coordinates the implementation of campus outreach programs: Urban Education Initiative; Summer Science and Engineering Program; Summer Institutes for Educators; STEP UP; tutoring programs at local partner schools; and, additional programs to be developed. Assists in the recruitment and selection of K-12 student and teacher participants; recruits, trains, assigns and supports undergraduates who are tutors, volunteers, work study students, and paid interns; and, assists in the with assessment of and reporting on the College’s outreach programs.

Community Partnerships Coordinator: Serves as a support to Smith faculty and undergraduates seeking to develop and implement CBL courses and CBPR projects. Coordinates ongoing meetings between Smith College faculty, staff and undergraduates with school and community partners; provides logistical support; ongoing training and support for undergraduates; and, assists with the assessment of and reporting on college/community courses/projects.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Education/Experience: Bachelor’s Degree and three years of relevant coordination experience in a higher education setting preferred.

Skills: Highly motivated; have a strong commitment to liberal arts education for women and outreach/college/community partnerships as means of fostering diverse and enriching learning opportunities; excellent writing and speaking skills; knowledge of MS Office; and the ability to work effectively as a member of a high functioning/flexible team, as well as with all levels of college departments and partner organizations. Late afternoon, evening and weekend work is often required.

This is a grant-funded, limited-term position (2 years with the possibility of renewal). Review of applications will begin immediately. To be considered for this position you must apply on-line at http://jobs.smith.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51601

Smith College is an equal opportunity employer encouraging excellence through diversity.

Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen recently spoke with Fox Business, and as tends to happen with these things, the topic of Flash on smartphones came up. And it was the same talking points — 75 percent of the video and gaming of the Web uses Flash — but Narayen did say that he expects to see Flash on Android and Palm’s webOS in the second half of the year. Said Narayen:

"We have a number of excited partners who are working aggressively with us to bring Flash to their devices, whether they be smartphones as well as handsets, and so companies like Google or RIM or Palm are going to be releasing versions of Flash on smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year."

At this point, we’ll believe it when we see it, but it’s still a step in the right direction. Check out the brief interview (erm, in Flash, no less) after the break. [Business Insider via PreCentral]

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Wade Roush wrote:

The Daily Grommet just hit the daily double. The Lexington, MA-based startup, which scouts out consumer products from colorful, progressive, relatively unknown manufacturers and promotes one such “grommet” each day through online videos, announced today that it has closed the first tranche of its Series A funding round at $3.4 million. Existing investors LaunchCapital and Gerry Laybourne, founder of Nickelodeon and Oxygen Media, were on board for the A round, and were joined by new investors Jean Hammond of Hub Angels and Launchpad Venture Group, John Landry of Lead Dog Ventures, Nancy Peretsman, and Jill Preotle of Boston Golden Seeds. “Daily Grommet is attacking an enormous market opportunity in a David vs. Goliath way,” Landry said in a statement. “This is already a totally disruptive story-using social technologies to blow up the old models of product discovery and distribution.” Xconomy profiled the Daily Grommet in July 2009 and published an extended interview with founder and CEO Jules Pieri in August 2009.

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A Rhode Island jury has returned a defense verdict in the first trial out of about 3,000 product liability lawsuits filed over the Composix Kugel hernia patch.

The hernia patch lawsuit trial involved claims brought by plaintiff John Whitfield against Davol, Inc. and C.R. Bard, Inc., alleging that he suffered severe internal injuries as a result of problems with the companies’ Composix Kugel patch.

During a hernia repair surgery in January 2004, doctors implanted a Composix Kugel patch in Whitfield. At some point after the surgery, the hernia patch allegedly broke inside his body and caused Whitfield to develop multiple and severe injuries when it became intertwined with his hernia. Whitfield alleged that the patch caused bowel obstructions, severe abdominal pain and swelling, nausea, sickness, permanent bowel disfigurement, and other problems.

Following more than two weeks of trial, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island rejected Whitfield’s claim, returning a defense verdict. Although the jury found that the plaintiff established that Davol and Bard were negligent in the design of the Composix Kugel patch, they indicated that he did not prove that his damages were directly caused by or contributed to by the negligent design.

Whitfield’s trial was the first out of about 3,000 product liability lawsuits that have been filed against Davol and Bard over problems with different variations of the Composix Kugel patch, many of which have been recalled. All of the Kugel lawsuits involve allegations that the patch was defectively designed and that the manufacturers failed to warn patients and doctors about the health risks associated with the product.

Between 2005 and 2007, three separate Kugel patch recalls were issued for different sizes and models of the hernia mesh. The recalls were issued because of problems with a plastic ring in the mesh that was prone to break, potentially causing bowel perforations, chronic intestinal fistula and other internal injuries that often require additional surgery to remove the mesh.

There are more than 1,300 other Kugel lawsuits pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, where all federal lawsuits have been centralized under Chief Judge Mary M. Lisi as part of a multidistrict litigation, or MDL. Another 1,774 lawsuits over the Composix Kugel patch have been centralized at the state level in Rhode Island Superior Court under Presiding Justice Alice B. Gibney.

Whitfield’s case was selected as one of four “bellwether” Kugel patch trials that were selected from the federal MDL for early trials. The parties and the court selected the four cases to gauge how juries will respond to evidence and witness testimony that may be presented in other cases throughout the Kugel mesh litigation.

The next lawsuit scheduled to go to trial is a claim filed by Christopher Thorpe, of North Carolina, and his wife, Laure, which is expected to begin June 9, 2010. Thorpe claims to have suffered an abdominal wall abscess and fistula allegedly caused by a broken Kugel patch ring. Eventually, doctors determined that the broken ring had become stained with bile and caused Thorpe to become septic. Thorpe required numerous surgeries to repair the damage and the lawsuit claims he continues to suffer physical pain.

According to earlier reports, there have been a handful of Kugel mesh settlements confidentially reached in individual cases. The outcome of the remaining bellwether Kugel trials could impact how the other cases are resolved, potentially resulting in an attempt to reach a global settlement of the litigation.

Ryan McBride wrote:

Hungry cancer cells beware. Cambridge, MA-based Agios Pharmaceuticals has become $130 million richer through its new deal with the venerable drugmaker Celgene to advance drugs intended to starve cancer cells to death, the companies report this morning.

Summit, NJ-based Celgene (NASDAQ:CELG) is paying big bucks to Agios in the form of payments and equity investments for an exclusive option, for a certain time span, to license and develop any of Agios’s experimental drugs. Agios can also earn up to $120 million in milestone payments for each of the drugs Celgene decides to license. Celgene can also pay Agios to extend the life of this arrangement, which essentially makes Agios into Celgene’s own cancer metabolism drug unit for a limited amount of time, without Celgene having to outright acquire the startup.

This deal is the latest in a series of big plugs for Agios and its approach to treating cancer. The company, formed in July 2008, is discovering drugs intended to block metabolic enzymes that nourish tumors. Last November the company caught the attention of the cancer research community with its first major paper in Nature, which showed that in lab experiments an enzyme previously thought to be innocuous could mutate into a nasty culprit in feeding brain cancer cells. The findings opened up the potential to develop drugs that target the mutated enzyme to treat cancers in which it is present. And last year the company also recruited David Schenkein, a former head of cancer drug development at the biotech powerhouse Genentech, to be its chief executive.

“This transformational alliance provides Agios with the long-term resources and flexibility to extend our leadership position in the cancer metabolism field and to advance our capabilities and programs as an integrated, independent company,” Schenkein said in a statement.

Agios has now raised, through alliances and investments, more than $163 million in less than two years. That’s a whopping sum for a young biotech launched in these turbulent financial times. (Agios previously raised $33 million in a Series A round of funding from Boston-area firms Third Rock Ventures and Flagship Ventures, as well as Arch Venture Partners in Seattle.) Still, the startup hasn’t proved that its drugs are safe or work in humans, and it will take years and lots of successes in clinical trials for the company to earn the lucrative milestone payments promised in its deal with Celgene.

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Luke Timmerman wrote:

Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN), the Seattle-based developer of immune-stimulating therapies for cancer, said today it has hired Richard Ranieri as its new senior vice president for human resources starting on April 19. Ranieri was formerly the executive vice president of human resources at Sepracor, which was acquired last September by Dainippon Sumitomo for $2.6 billion. Ranieri takes the Dendreon job as the company is eagerly awaiting word by May 1 from the FDA on whether it can start selling its first product in the U.S., sipuleucel-T (Provenge). Dendreon raised more than $630 million from investors last year to support the launch, and is on a hiring binge, growing from 200 employees a year ago to 600 this year.

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It appears that those green shoots emerging in the Canadian rail sector in recent months are now in full bloom. But the transition has not gone unnoticed by investors, according to Steven Hansen, Raymond James analyst.

“Weekly volumes are not only improving, but also surging to fairly robust levels—in some cases recovering to pre‐recession levels,” Mr. Hansen said in a note to clients Thursday.

In the first 13 weeks of 2010, Canadian and North American carload originations swelled 12.5% and 6.7% respectively, he noted. At Canadian National Railway Co. carload volumes have increased 14.6% during the first quarter compared to last year, while its smaller rival, Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., has seen growth of 9.1% in its carloads.

“We believe it is fair to say that the recovery has safely advanced from a fragile, nascent state, to one of reasonable health and vigour,” Mr. Hansen said.

He upgraded his earnings estimates on both CN and CP accordingly. But cautioned that the recovery hasn’t gone unnoticed with both stocks experiencing run-ups in their shares as volumes returned.

Mr. Hansen increased his price target for CP to $68 a share, compared to $65 previously, and maintained his “outperform” rating.

But while he also increased his price target for CN to $67, from $64.50 previously, he downgraded it to a “market perform” due to the recent appreciation of its shares.

Both CN and CP will report their first quarter results in two weeks.

Scott Deveau