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SoftLayer’s Singapore data center (pictured above) provides an international footprint that it key to some of the company’s game developer customers. SoftLayer says its infrastructure now supports more than 100 million gamers. (Photo: SoftLayer)

SoftLayer now supports more than 100 million active game players online worldwide, and has added 60 new gaming companies to its customer list in the last two quarters alone, the company said this week.

What’s SoftLayer’s secret sauce with gaming companies? In a world in which a couple of milliseconds of lag can be the difference between virtual life and death, and the inability to scale up with demand can kill a new game title, there is little room for failure on the part of the hosting provider. In the game hosting arena, success breeds success, allowing SoftLayer to build organic growth atop its track record.

The company has built a solid reputation via gaming conferences and word of mouth. “It’s kind of a tight knit space, and they all talk,” said Marc Jones, VP of Product Innovation at SoftLayer. Notable game developers among SoftLayer’s customers include Hothead Games, Geewa, Grinding Gear Games, Peak Games and Rumble Entertainment.

“Game developers don’t have the time or resources to manage their own complex infrastructure because they need to focus on their core business – developing great games, launching on time and keeping players engaged,” said Jones. “Because we understand the high stakes of their operations, we’ve tailored our cloud platform to meet gaming companies’ demands – from initial game release and explosive, overnight growth, to the performance and availability demands that come with everyday play.”

SoftLayer provides these companies with the infrastructure to test, deploy, manage, play, and grow their games. SoftLayer’s global infrastructure platform spans more than 100,000 servers in 13 data centers across the U.S. Europe and Asia. The company’s ability to provide bare metal (dedicated servers) combined with a low latency network is key to its its appeal.

Bare Metal vs. Public Cloud

“The ability to have hybrid solutions from a bare metal standpoint is perfect for a gaming world with a lot of real time interactions, multi-player and social aspects,” said Jones, “There’s constant communication. A lot of the companies are capturing interaction points to understand how people are engaging, and using this info to help them tailor the experience. Bare metal gives you much better performance than public cloud, and they have the ability to use public to scale when needed during spikes.”

In most of those cases, gaming companies are running a database on the backend, and that a lot of companies are leveraging NoSQL database options in particular, according to SoftLayer. One example of this is Hothead Games, which has released six games that have hit the Top 10 in both the Apple and Google Play app stores, including the BIG WIN Sports series of games and the recently launched Rivals at War. The company runs their back-end database, Cloudant, on the SoftLayer platform, enabling Hothead Games to scale massively and economically, handling billions of database transactions per-day while delivering a superior experience to gamers.

“From a compute standpoint, (bare metal cloud) is definitely what we see as an advantage,” said Jones. “On equal footing is our network. Maintaining a private network that interconnects all our data centers is appealing.” The company has its own private network, which allows it to deliver a predictable, low latency experience.

The company’s international presence is also a selling point. “A lot of our bigger gaming customers have a lot of servers deployed in multiple data centers,” said Jones. “A few customers are active in Amsterdam, Singapore and the US.”

Gaming Trends

By all accounts the online gaming vertical continues to grow at a rapid pace. “We definitely see a lot of online games – Facebook style games, social games and mobile applications,” said Jones. “Those are the ones we’ve seen the most in the last six months to a year. We have hundreds of gaming customers, and the size of those customers is usually pretty substantial. They’ll build out that infrastructure, as they get popular.”

The company can’t disclose its largest customers, but provided examples of mobile, first person shooters (FPS), and MMO (massively multiplayer online) all of which have unique needs.

The Social Gaming Customer: Peak Games

Peak Games is the largest and fastest growing company in Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa. With over 200 employees and 45 million gamers, it is one of the largest global social gaming providers. “The ability to add tens of thousands users overnight is the value of working with SoftLayer,” said Safa Sofuoglu, CTO of Peak Games. “SoftLayer understands the needs of game developers. We can very quickly double our infrastructure requirements when one of our games take off, and easily manage and support new users without compromising on performance while not incurring massive costs. SoftLayer gives us the flexibility to utilize what we need without being locked in.”

THE FPS: Ballistic

Rumble Entertainment has a first person shooter named Ballistic. With an FPS, low latency is of the utmost importance, with players obsessing down to the millisecond. These are games of accuracy and precision. “We’re expanding our first-person shooter game Ballistic into Asian markets, and we wanted to partner with a cloud service provider that could deliver not only raw computing power but also high-quality network service,” said Jim Tso, senior producer for Rumble Entertainment. “SoftLayer’s data center in Singapore and global network footprint help us overcome any network latency issues, giving our users a great online experience.”

THE MMO: Path of Exile

“Path of Exile is unique among online action RPGs (role playing games) because players play on one large international realm,” said Chris Wilson, managing director for Grinding Gear Games. ”SoftLayer’s data centers on multiple continents, and the free bandwidth between them, let us run servers local to the individual players while still allowing them to play with their international friends if they choose to,” said Chris Wilson, managing director for Grinding Gear Games. SoftLayer’s ability to provision new servers quickly allowed us to deal with the immense demand we faced when we launched Path of Exile’s Open Beta. We’re extremely pleased with SoftLayer and the server reliability that it allows us to offer our customers.”

Kardashian women are known to have generous hips, but not every member of the family is as voluptuous as Kim. Kendall Jenner, the half-sister of Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé, this week graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, showing off the athletic body she inherited from her father, Olympic decathlete and gold medal-winner Bruce Jenner.

According to a Daily Mail report, the young model and reality TV star told the magazine that she is “constantly criticized for being too skinny.” She goes as far as to say that she is “trying to gain weight,” but that her body “won’t let it happen.”

“What people don’t understand is that calling someone too skinny is the same as calling someone too fat,” said Jenner.

Jenner began appearing on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians in 2007 and began her modeling career at age 14. She just celebrated her 17th birthday back in November 2012.

Jenner has not directly addressed her comments through her social media accounts, though she did post the following cryptic message the day after the Bazaar story was published:

Follow @KendallJenner

Kendall Jenner
@KendallJenner

just not gunna deal anymore

March 28, 2013

At GDC yesterday, Facebook unveiled the Games Developer Center. The hub promises to contain all the information a game developer needs to make games for Facebook or Facebook integrated games for mobile devices. That wasn’t the only announcement, however, as Facebook is also bringing games to the newly redesigned timeline.

Facebook announced that it will begin rolling out the new Games section to timeline and users’ About pages. The section will only appear for those who have played one or more social games in the past 30 days, or those who have liked at least one game on Facebook.

It should be noted that the Games section contains the same privacy controls as other sections on timeline. A user can mark a game’s app privacy to “close friends” and only those designated as such will be able to see the game on their timeline.

If you want your game to be a little more special, developers can use Open Graph to create a stand-alone app section for their game. Players can then place the game in its own section of timeline for all to see. You can learn more about that here.

As for the weekly bug report, Facebook says that 33 bugs were fixed while 60 were assigned for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

Tom Roberts is President of AFCOM, the leading association supporting the educational and professional development needs of data center professionals around the globe.

TOM ROBERTS
AFCOM

If you’re struggling to fill a job in the data center, you are not alone. With approximately 4 million IT jobs available just in the United States, to say a shortage of qualified people exists today is an understatement. It has created a worker’s market with only 4 percent unemployment in the technology sector—about half the overall jobless rate.

This shortage exists for any number of reasons:

• Graduates from universities and two-year tech schools entering the workforce are greener than a solar-powered data center and require far too much on-the-job training.
• Those currently employed in IT seem to be staying put because they like what they’re doing and companies are no longer in layoff mode.
• Others have reached or are rapidly approaching retirement and taking their decades of experience with them.
• High-profile companies like Facebook, Google and Apple seem far more “sexy” than traditional corporations and directly compete with attracting the best and brightest from the younger generation.

I believe the best way to conquer all of the above challenges is to standardize the education path for data center professionals. Treat those in the industry just like the architects, engineers, school administrators, mental health professionals and social workers who must adhere to rigorous CEU requirements to move up the ladder or stay qualified.

The source of education is secondary; it can be gained through tech schools, conferences or corporate America. This will help boost standardization with respect to career paths, job descriptions, and skillsets.

Here’s what I would like to see happen. In addition to being president of AFCOM, I’m chairman of Data Center World, a conference and trade show for data center professionals. For the first time we are offering attendance certification for those who attend our educational sessions. Then, in the near future, these records of attendance can be used as CEUs to supplement their current certification(s) obtained from the leading data center education companies (EPI, ICOR, C-Net Training, IDCP, etc.).

As an association with a goal of advancing data center and facilities management professionals, AFCOM’s role is to provide ongoing education like it has for more than 30 years. I think it makes a lot of sense to work hand-in-hand with these companies so that education gained from conferences also count toward specific career goals/paths.

If we can cross-track and document education from all different sources and provide an easy way for data center professionals to access a composite list, it would be a win-win for those recruiting and looking for work.

Right now, inconsistencies are far too common. Two companies may be recruiting for a person to fill the same position, i.e. facilities manager, but the actual responsibilities and needed skills don’t match up. No two IT job descriptions are the same. You may attract a person with a mechanical engineering degree and some who fixes furnaces with the same advertisement. I read that the typical time-to-hire process for an individual IT resource is 55 days. Who has that kind of time?

Change never stops in this industry, and now more than ever, you must keep your data center current or fall behind. The fact that so many companies can’t seem to find the right people with the right skills is a disaster waiting to happen.

Let’s all work together to make sure it doesn’t.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

Samsung is expected to launch tablets that feature AMOLED full HD (1920 x 1200) displays in both 8-inch and 10.1-inch variants. Turns out the 8-inch size is on track to be released this year, but it doesn’t appear we will see the 10.1-inch version or the often-rumored 11.4-inch version. This doesn’t mean that Samsung won’t have a newer 10.1-inch tablet because they plan on releasing a tablet with the same 2560 x 1600 PLS LCD panel that is on the Nexus 10.

We expect both tabs to be marketed as the Galaxy Tab 3, but still no word on when we will see these bad boys. All things point to IFA 2013, but with the Galaxy Note III being the top dog for that one, they might want to limit the amount of devices for that event. I think there’s a good chance we will see them in the late spring or early summer.

source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: Samsung’s 10.1 and 11.4-inch AMOLED Full HD (1920 x 1200) displays now delayed, 8.0-inch still on track as scheduled

The lawsuit over the ebook rights to Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves is moving forward in court, with Open Road Media and HarperCollins filing motions on March 18. HarperCollins filed its lawsuit against Open Road in December 2011.

In the case, HarperCollins says that its 1971 contract with George gives it the right to publish Julie of the Wolves in any format, including as an ebook. Open Road argues that HarperCollins never had ebook rights. George, who was 92 when HarperCollins first filed its lawsuit, said that she was “with Open Road all the way,” but she died in May 2012 and never gave a deposition.

HarperCollins argues that its contract included future types of works, and  that print books and ebooks are the same. Open Road contends that it did have the right to publish Julie of the Wolves because ebooks didn’t exist in the 1970s, and because HarperCollins’ 1971 contract with George didn’t specify a royalty rate on electronic works.

Both of the motions filed last week refer to a 2001 case in which Random House sued Rosetta for publishing ebook editions of Random House works. A federal judge ruled that ebooks and books weren’t the same thing and that Random House couldn’t block RosettaBooks from selling the titles. Random House appealed, but the decision was upheld, and Random House and RosettaBooks ultimately settled. Because of the outcome of that case, HarperCollins specifies in its motion how different the Julie of the Wolves case is from Random House v. Rosetta, and Open Road stresses the cases’ similarities.

HarperCollins: Ebooks weren’t around in 1971, but we knew they were coming

HarperCollins notes (here’s the PDF of the motion) that its 1971 contract grants it the right to publish Julie ”in book form,” and says that the grant “encompasses ebook publishing rights of the type Open Road has unlawfully appropriated, particularly given the virtually identical reading experience afforded by its offering to the hardcover and paperback offerings of HarperCollins, with which it directly competes.”

HarperCollins and Open Road both focus closely on the “storage and retrieval and information systems” clause in the original contract. The contract had stated:

“the publisher shall grant no license without the prior written constant of the Author with respect to the following rights in the work: use thereof in storage and retrieval and information systems, and/or whether through computer, computer-stored, mechanical or other electronic means now known or hereafter invented…”

HarperCollins argues that it’s “no stretch to recognize that ‘storage and retrieval information systems’ fully encompass the display of an ebook via an ebook reading device.” In a section of its motion on “the antecedents to ebooks,” it mentions, for instance, a 1968 article “envisioning the Dynabook, a new storage and retrieval device the size of a three-ring binder that would have a multipurpose screen that could be used for both reading and writing.” HarperCollins concludes that “without doubt, as of 1971, when the Agreement was executed, ebooks of the type offered by entities such as Open Road were foreseeable…Electronic delivery of books and other textual works was further anticipated as early as the 1950s and 1960s, when computer scientists envisioned and experimented with devices that could store books, documents and even entire libraries electronically.”

Open Road: “Information, storage and retrieval systems” don’t mean “ebooks”

In its motion (PDF), Open Road says that while HarperCollins takes the phrase “in book form” to include the right to publish an ebook as well, the judge in Random House  vs. Rosetta “found that this term excluded ebooks…It has been for decades the standard grant language that trade usage in the publishing industry has been understood to mean paper forms of the work.” Open Road cites HarperCollins’ own online dictionary, for instance, which defines “book” as “a number of sheets of paper, parchment, etc. with writing or printing on them” and has a separate entry for ebooks: “Hence, ‘book form’ and ‘digital form’ are clearly distinguished as separate forms of publication.”

Open Road also looks at HarperCollins’ later contracts and finds that, unlike the 1971 contract with George, they referred more explicitly to ebooks and didn’t use ”information, storage and retrieval systems” to mean ebook rights. Open Road adds, “ebooks and information storage and retrieval systems are apples and oranges…Harper cannot reasonably argue it now believes there is no difference between ebooks and information storage and retrieval systems, in light of its own differentiation of the two technologies in its earlier contracts.”

Open Road focuses on the fact that digital royalties were absent from the 1971 contract. It says it

“offered to pay Ms. George a 50% royalty to publish her work as an ebook. Ms. George was intrigued by Open Road’s offer and the prospect of bringing her work to a new medium. Still, she wanted to keep her works ‘in-house’ with her print publisher. So she asked Harper to publish Julie of the Wolves as an ebook for the same royalty. Harper flatly refused. It told her it would publish the ebook, but only for a 25% royalty … even though … (1) the contract is silent as to ebook publishing rights and lacks a royalty provision in exchange for those rights, (2) Ms. George expressly reserved all rights not specifically granted, and (3) the technology for such a product did not exist until many years later and a commercially viable ebook publishing market did not take hold until just a few years ago.”

The publisher argues that there was no nascent ebook market in 1971 “or 1981 or 1991,” saying, “the issue is not whether a few isolated academic visionaries could dream of a day when the words of an author’s work could be digitally transmitted through space.”

HarperCollins and Open Road both declined to comment, and a court date has not yet been set.

HarperCollins motion

Open Road motion

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(ORCL) announced a complete refresh of its midrange and high-end SPARC server lines with new SPARC T5 and M5 servers running Solaris. Building on the SPARC T4 platform, the new servers complete Oracle’s SPARC family, spanning entry-level, mid-range and high-end.

The SPARC M5-32 server is designed for large, complex workloads and features massive I/O and memory capacity. It is 10 times faster than previous generations and offers superior hardware domaining and RAS capabilities. The new servers expand Oracle’s SPARC portfolio and enable near linear scalability from 1 to 32 sockets, with one common core, one operating system, and one common set of systems management and virtualization tools, making them ideal platforms for building clouds.

The new T5 servers have set 17 world records in TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council) and SPEC tests, according to Oracle. A SPARC T5-8 server equipped with eight 3.6 GHz SPARC T5 processors achieved a world record result of 8,552,523 tpmC for a single system on the TPC-C benchmark. Oracle demonstrated this world record database performance running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Oracle Partitioning. (Note: IBM is challenging Oracle’s benchmarking claims).

“Oracle has refreshed its SPARC family with the world’s fastest processor and launched the world’s fastest single server for Database, Java and multi-tier applications,” said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems, Oracle. “The new SPARC T5 and M5 systems leapfrog the competition with up to 10x the performance of the previous generation, offering an unbeatable value for midrange and high-end enterprise computing.”

Oracle also announced two new Oracle Optimized Solutions that exploit the performance, reliability and value of SPARC T5 servers, Oracle storage, Oracle Database and Oracle Middleware. These include Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Database, and Oracle Optimized Solution for WebLogic Server.

“SAS Business Analytics enables faster, more accurate data-driven decisions. Implementing SAS Business Analytics on SPARC servers with Oracle Solaris solves critical business issues in transformational ways. SPARC and Oracle Solaris have long been a proven platform for SAS applications,” said Craig Rubendall, Senior Director of Research and Development at SAS. “We’ve seen in-house that the technically advanced features and design of the SPARC M5 servers along with processor and throughput enhancements provide a very well-suited platform for enterprise class SAS application deployments.”

Today’s IT environment is being built around direct efficiencies. This means better resource utilization, improved monitoring, and the consolidation of enterprise systems. Many organizations are building a business around an efficient and well-controlled IT environment. The idea is to create an IT as a service model where administrators can allow for self-provisioned services and automation to help control administrative overhead.

This is where technologies around the converged infrastructure can really help. Intelligent storage systems can help an organization cut costs and control very vital resources. In HP’s whitepaper, we learn how utility storage creates a unified platform for efficiency and growth. Directly modeled for the needs of virtualization and cloud computing, HP’s converged storage infrastructure leads to three very direct benefits:

• Distributed environment multi-tenancy
• Geographical resource federation
• Cloud, virtualization, and data center efficiency

Furthermore, converged systems add a lot more than advanced functionality. With the idea to simplify the IT environment, using converged storage platform helps with both easy of management and agility. Now, administrators are able to control logical storage segments while still being flexible with the entire organization.

Download HP’s whitepaper on converged storage environments to see how an organization can embark on the path to IT as a service. These new types of platforms create an infrastructure capable of advanced automation and self-provisioned services on demand. Intelligent systems like HP’s utility storage will help reduce administrative costs and have other key benefits as well. By reducing the hardware footprint and deploying advanced platforms like the HP’s converged storage, organizations can actually help extend the life of their data center as well.  Consolidated systems operating with more efficient technologies are easier to control, cool and maintain. In fact, according to the whitepaper, companies can extend the life of their data centers by two to five years through a combination of IT strategies. In creating a robust environment, remember to always use intelligent systems which will enhance your ability to be both flexible and agile – while still consistently maintaining infrastructure control.

AT&T customers pining for the new Samsung Galaxy S 4 can begin the pre-order process on April 16. The carrier announced the news on Thursday, saying the price would be $249.99 with two-year contract. No official availability date was provided, but the statement made by AT&T implies it could be the first in the U.S. to have the Galaxy S 4:

“Continuing our legacy as the first carrier to launch Samsung’s Galaxy series, we are excited to announce AT&T customers will be able to begin pre-ordering the Galaxy S4 beginning April 16 for $249.99 with a two-year commitment. We are proud to offer this iconic device and continue to offer our customers the best smartphone line-up, with a variety of devices for every lifestyle and budget. For more information and to pre-order, please visit http://www.att.com/galaxys4.”

Interestingly, T-Mobile loosely shared details for the Galaxy S 4 on its network earlier this week. T-Mobile CEO John Legere noted that the Galaxy S 4 would arrive around May 1 for the up-front price of $99 and 24 monthly, interest-free payments. Customers can also pay full price for the phone and then just pay $50 to $70 for monthly service through one of the Simple Choice plans.

It’s likely that T-Mobile’s Galaxy S 4 will cost less than what AT&T is charging: Assuming the phone payments are $20 per month — the same as the iPhone 5 — the Galaxy S 4 would cost $579 on T-Mobile. Will consumers see that price difference and take advantage of it? That’s the big question that remains unanswered as T-Mobile transitions completely away from phone contracts with subsidized phone prices.

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Ustream announced today that it will provide exclusive live video streaming for Bonnaroo and the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival. This is the result of a partnership with Superfly Presents, Bulldog DM and Springboard Productions.

While we’ve certainly seen Bonnaroo streamed live in the past, like on Vevo and YouTube, Ustream says this deal marks the first time viewers everywhere will have access to the lineup of performances for both festivals through its interactive, socially integrated platform.

“This year, fans will be granted never-seen-before, live access to two of the most important festivals in the U.S. — even in the palms of their hands via mobile devices,” said Chris Blocker, SVP of sales and business development for Ustream. “The mix of premium and fly-on-the-wall content powerfully illustrates how bands can become fans and fans can join bands in a seamless social entertainment experience such as this.”

“The world famous Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and Outside Lands in San Francisco’s beautiful Golden Gate Park are two of the premier destination music festivals in the U.S. and attract diverse and heavily engaged audiences each year,” said Alex Machurov, director of new business & partnerships at Superfly Presents. “We are excited to partner with Ustream and believe their technology will significantly enhance the user experience in Manchester and San Francisco. Now millions more music fans around the world can enjoy its interactive, personalized platform.”

Bonnaroo takes place in Manchester, Tenn. On June 13-16. Outside Lands takes place in San Francisco August 9-11.

Check out the Bonnaroo line-up here. Outside Lands doesn’t have its lineup posted as of the time of this writing.

For some celebrities, the pressure of constant exposure in public can become almost overbearing. When combined with the Hollywood demand that celebrity bodies always look perfect, the mix can sometimes cause trouble.

This week, reality TV star Rob Kardashian is accused of stealing from a Paparazzo who was allegedly photographing him without his shirt on. A TMZ report cites unnamed “law enforcement sources” as saying Kardashian took the memory card from the photographer’s camera, promising to pay for it later.

Rob Kardashian has appeared on the reality TV shows Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Khloé & Lamar, and Dancing With the Stars. TMZ reports that he is currently working through a weight loss program, which could explain his shyness. He also broke up with singer Rita Ora this past December, accusing her of cheating on him.

In 2011, Penguin decided to stop offering new ebooks to libraries, citing “concerns about the security of digital editions.” The publisher then ended its relationship with digital library distributor OverDrive.

Now that Penguin is running ebook trials with two new library distributors — Baker & Taylor and 3M — the publisher has decided it is safe to make new ebooks available for lending again, the AP reported Wednesday. Penguin has been tracking ebook checkouts at libraries to make sure they are not cutting into paid book sales, and found that “the effect of library downloads on commercial revenues has been acceptable.”

“Penguin is proud to make all of our eBooks available to library patrons,” Tim McCall, Penguin’s VP of online sales and marketing, said in a statement. “After careful examination of our pilot programs, we are ready to take the next step and offer what consumers and libraries have been asking for, thus fulfilling our mission to bring new writers to readers.”

In its library trials, Penguin allows an ebook to be lent to only one person at a time, and after a year the library has to buy a new copy of the ebook. The prices for libraries are the same as retail prices. Penguin’s library ebooks aren’t available to Kindle users, because Baker & Taylor and 3M do not yet support the format.

Other publishers also place restrictions on ebook library lending. Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries, but at prices as much as three times higher than the retail price. HarperCollins allows its ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette only makes new ebooks available to some libraries in a pilot program, and charges more than retail price. Macmillan is running a two-year trial that makes 1,200 older ebooks available to libraries. Simon & Schuster does not make its ebooks available to libraries.

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People living near asphalt pavement sealed with coal tar have an elevated risk of cancer, according to a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Much of this calculated excess risk results from exposures in children, age six or younger, to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the sealant.

“The increased cancer risk associated with coal-tar-sealed asphalt (CSA) likely affects a large number of people in the U.S. Our results indicate that the presence of coal-tar-based pavement sealants is associated with significant increases in estimated excess lifetime cancer risk for nearby residents,” said E. Spencer Williams, Ph.D., principal author of the study and Baylor University assistant research scientist at the Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.

Researchers from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and the U.S. Geological Survey in Austin, Texas, are the first to report on the potential human health effects of PAHs in settled house dust and soil in living spaces and soil adjacent to parking lots sealed with coal-tar-based products.

“Exposure to these compounds in settled house dust is a particularly important source of risk for children younger than six years of age, as they are expected to ingest this material at higher rates,” Williams said. “This indicates that the use of coal-tar-based pavement sealants magnifies aggregate exposures to PAHs in children and adults in residences adjacent to where these products are used and is associated with human health risks in excess of widely accepted standards.”

Data on PAHs in settled house dust used for this analysis were published previously by the same authors. In that study, settled house dust and parking lot dust were sampled for 23 ground-floor apartments in Austin, Texas. The parking lot surfaces adjacent to the apartments were coal-tar-sealed asphalt, asphalt-based sealant over asphalt pavement, or unsealed concrete. Concentrations of PAHs were 25 times higher in house dust in residences adjacent to coal-tar-sealed pavement compared to those with other pavement types. 

“This study was the first to find a strong association between a product or a behavior and PAHs in house dust,” said Barbara Mahler, the USGS research hydrologist who oversaw the study.

For this study, doses and risk associated with residences adjacent to unsealed asphalt lots were considered relative to those adjacent to (CSA) parking lots. Benzo(a)pyrene concentrations in CSA-affected settled house dust were high relative to those reported in most parts of the U.S. where coal-tar-based sealcoat is not used (California and Arizona). Data for PAHs in coal-tar-sealed asphalt-affected soils and unsealed asphalt-affected soils are available from samples from New Hampshire and suburban Chicago. 

The analysis did not consider exposure to the dust on the pavement itself, which has PAH concentrations 10s to 100s of times higher than those in house dust or soil, or inhalation of air over sealed pavement.

“Over time, about half of the PAHs in the sealcoat are released into the air, and concentrations in air are extremely high, particularly in the hours to days after application,” said Peter Van Metre, USGS research hydrologist and author of two papers on volatilization of PAHs from sealcoat.  

Sealcoat is a black, shiny substance sprayed or painted on the asphalt pavement of parking lots, driveways, and playgrounds to improve appearance and protect the underlying asphalt.  An estimated 85 million gallons of coal-tar-based sealant are applied to pavement each year, primarily east of the Continental Divide in the U.S. and parts of Canada. Coal-tar-based pavement sealants are 15 to 35 percent coal-tar pitch, which has been classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Over time, the dried sealant is worn away from pavement surfaces, and the resulting mobile dust particles can be transported into nearby homes.

“Although the analysis presented here is based on a limited dataset, the results indicate that biomonitoring might be warranted to characterize the exposure of children and adults to PAHs associated with coal-tar-based pavement sealant,” Williams said. “Further investigation is also needed into the impacts of coal-tar-based pavement sealants on PAH concentrations in indoor and outdoor environments.”

To learn more about Baylor University and their nationally ranked research program, visit their website. 

Publishers in Portugal want Google to pay for the right to include links and snippets of articles in Google News. The story is always the same from country to country. In recent months, we’ve seen Google playing ball with publishers, and it seems other countries are seeking solutions similar to those Google has proposed elsewhere.

Reuters is reporting:

Alberico Fernandes, head of the Portuguese Confederation of Social Communication Media, told Reuters that the global Internet services group’s Iberian and Portuguese units rejected the demand at a first meeting last week but agreed to continue negotiations.

He said Google “showed readiness to collaborate with media groups to help us modernize and make our content more profitable”, something it had agreed to do in France earlier.

Earlier this year, Google announced an initiative to “help stimulate innovation and increase revenues” for French publishers. Google agreed to create a €60 million fund called the DIgital Publishing Innovation Fund to “help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.” Google said it would also “deepen” its partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using Google’s ad technology.

The announcement followed a similar one Google made in December, when it reached an agreement with publishers in Belgium after six years of litigation, which saw publishers sue Google claiming that it violated their copyrights by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search.

As part of the agreement in Belgium, Google said it would advertise its services on publishers’ media, and publishers would optimize their use of AdWords. Google would also work with Belgian French-language publishers to “help increase publishers’ revenue,” collaborating on ways to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the Ad Exchange. Google would also work with Belgian publishers to implement Google+ social tools and launch YouTube channels.

At the time, Google said it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world. Perhaps Portugal is next.

Google unveiled a “patent pledge” that it hopes will shield cloud software and big data developers from the type of litigation that has engulfed the mobile phone industry. The pledge, which is like a non-aggression pact, covers ten patents related to Google’s MapReduce technology.

The pledge, which Google announced on Thursday, says that developers are free to use or sell the technology described in the patents without fear of future lawsuits. The shield applies, however, only to projects based on open source software that is available to all.

Google’s patent pledge appears intended to complement the open-source software licenses that allow programmers to build on each other’s work. Such licenses, like the GNU General Public License, grant anyone the right under copyright law to use designated blocks of software code; these rights, however, can be undercut by competing patent rights.

The ten patents included in Google’s pledge include a controversial one issued last year that covers a form of parallel processing known as MapReduce. The patent gave rise to fears that Google would be able to monopolize tools like Hadoop, which is an integral part of the so-called “big data” revolution that is fueling a wide range of new products and services. Google’s pledge appears intended to allay that fear.

In a phone interview, a person from Google explained that the MapReduce patent pledge is intended to help the emerging big data and cloud software industry avoid a litigation train-wreck like the one that befell the mobile industry. (In recent years, an arms race of patents covering smartphones has led to a relentless series of global lawsuits which have limited the spread of software technology and increased prices for consumers.)

Google suggests it will add other patents to its non-aggression pool and is inviting others to do the same. In theory, this will lead to an open and expanding workshop of tools for cloud developers; however, there is no guarantee it will work out this way.

One problem is that the pledge will have little effect against patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures, which buy up old patents and use them to file lawsuits against productive companies. The trolls are largely immune from retaliation because they operate through shell companies and don’t actually make any products that can be the subject of a counter-suit.

The person at Google, who did not want to identified, said the pledge may not be effective against trolls but that it may curtain the practice of “privateering” — where major companies give patents to trolls in order to harass rivals or in return for a cut of the proceeds the trolls obtain. This person said that, under the terms of the pledge, Google reserves the right to sue anyone who financially benefits from such lawsuits.

There is also the question of whether the Google pledge is legally enforceable. Typically, promises to the world at large don’t carry any legal force because they lack what lawyers call “consideration.” The Google source, however, said those who rely on the pledge could likely prevent Google from going back on the pledge through a doctrine called “promissory estoppel.”

In the bigger picture, the Google patent pledge represents part of a growing effort among Silicon Valley companies to rein in a patent system that many believe has become over-extended. Twitter, for instance, last year introduced an employment contract that promises its engineers that their inventions won’t be used to fuel the patent wars.

(Image by alphaspirit via Shutterstock)

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