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Researchers believe that vitamin D3 acts to protect an aging brain and boost overall memory and cognitive function. This is thought to be done by increasing levels of protective antioxidants, increasing key hormones and suppressing a hyperactive immune system that can…

Tuberculosis (TB) was declared nothing less than a world-wide health emergency by the World Health Organization 20 years ago. If you haven’t heard much about the threat of that disease lately, does it mean modern medicine has it under control? Far from it. In fact…

This is the story of a working couple, she who eats organic and researches natural remedies, and he who thinks his food and product “regimen” is harmless. She is leaving on a short trip, so she tells him to keep a journal of everything he eats, drinks, and puts on his…

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has broken down by race the number of gun deaths in America, and – according to this government agency’s own figures – the divide is especially pronounced between whites and blacks. According to data…

The ever-expanding federal autocracy, which is filled with career government bureaucrats who have union-protected tenure and far too little congressional scrutiny, are slowly but steadily eroding every original intent contained in the Bill of Rights. The most recent…

Final Book Now Available

Digital health data are the lifeblood of a continuous learning health system. A steady flow of reliable data is necessary to coordinate and monitor patient care, analyze and improve systems of care, conduct research to develop new products and approaches, assess the effectiveness of medical interventions, and advance population health. The totality of available health data is a crucial resource that should be considered an invaluable public asset in the pursuit of better care, improved health, and lower health care costs.

The ability to collect, share, and use digital health data is rapidly evolving. Increasing adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) is being driven by the implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which pays hospitals and individuals incentives if they can demonstrate that they use basic EHRs in 2011. Only a third had access to the basic features necessary to leverage this information for improvement, such as the ability to view laboratory results, maintain problem lists, or manage prescription ordering.

In addition to increased data collection, more organizations are sharing digital health data. Data collected to meet federal reporting requirements or for administrative purposes are becoming more accessible. Efforts such as Health.Data.gov provide access to government datasets for the development of insights and software applications with the goal of improving health. Within the private sector, at least one pharmaceutical company is actively exploring release of some of its clinical trial data for research by others. Digital Data Improvement Priorities for Continuous Learning in Health and Health Care: Workshop Summary summarizes discussions at the March 2012 Institute of Medicine (2012) workshop to identify and characterize the current deficiencies in the reliability, availability, and usability of digital health data and consider strategies, priorities, and responsibilities to address such deficiencies.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Health and Medicine | Computers and Information Technology

In a move that will be welcome to all tech-savvy frequent fliers, the Federal Aviation Administration may finally loosen its rules on using electronic devices during flight takeoffs and landings. The New York Times reports that the FAA plans to allow fliers to use their laptops and tablets while set to “airplane mode” at during the takeoff and landing process by the end of the year. This doesn’t give fliers carte blanche to keep all their devices on throughout the whole flight, however, since the FAA would keep its current rules in place for cellphones and smartphones. News of a potential rule change comes just over a year after the FAA promised to give revising its in-flight electronics rules “a fresh look.” Outgoing Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski late last year urged the FAA to step up their efforts to change the rules and said that the agency should “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable devices” on flights.

With hectic schedules, it can be hard to keep track of everything in your news feed. That’s why we created the TalkAndroid Daily Dose. This is where we recap the day’s hottest stories so you can get yourself up to speed in quick fashion. Happy reading!!

Apps

Evernote Launches Version 5 For Android: New Camera, Document Search And More

Pac-Man + Tournaments hits the Play Store for free

Carriers

T-Mobile’s UNcarrier Simple Choice no-contract plans now live

Google

Say no to Google Glass while driving says West Virginia lawmaker

King of Chrome Leaks François Beaufort Hired by Google

Phones

Rumor: Huawei currently working on a Galaxy S 4 competitor featuring a 4.9-inch 1080p screen and quad-core processor

Rumor: Motorola X phone to be launched in November with a 4.8-inch display, Sapphire glass, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 800

Motorola X Phone rumor updated

Nexus 5 to be all about the camera, will be more compact, and will skip the 1080p display

Samsung Fonblet appears in Global Download Center with 6.3-inch display

Samsung Exynos 5210 processor revealed, Could power the Galaxy S 4 Mini

Report says 70% of first 10 million Galaxy S 4s to have Snapdragon 600 processors

Steve Kondik leaves Samsung, shares thoughts on Samsung Galaxy S 4

Samsung Galaxy Note III Rumored To Have Unbreakable Display

Sony Xperia ZL Finally Priced For The U.S., Be Prepared To Pay A Premium

Misc

Android tethering could be threatened by judge’s patent ruling in favor of Nokia

HTC’s marketing chief talks about brand making a bolder approach

 

Come comment on this article: TalkAndroid Daily Dose for March 25, 2013

Earlier today we reported on some rumors concerning the Motorola X Phone. Since the news broke, folks have been working to try to verify as much of the information as they could and we now know some of that information was not entirely accurate. The possible release date was the subject of much of the research, with sources indicating the device is on track to be announced at Google I/O. The X Phone should be available for consumers by July. If accurate, this would seem to rule out the presence of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 processor. Earlier reports also appear to have overstated the battery size, with more recent data pointing toward a 3,300 mAh size battery.

We’ll continue to watch to see how many of these rumored specs turn out to be accurate, especially with the rumor mill getting into full gear regarding this forthcoming Motorola smartphone.

source: PhoneArena

Come comment on this article: Motorola X Phone rumor updated

François Beaufort has been doing a great job giving us a sneak peek at upcoming features to Google Chrome. They’ve ranged from Google Now notifications on the desktop to the high class Chrome Pixel. Of course these peeks were never official in capacity. Well that’s going to change as Mr. Beaufort took to his Google+ account to announce that Google has snatched him up.

With being hired, it appears that he will be giving us in-depth looks at behind the scenes action and making announcements officially. It’s a brilliant move by Google as it curbs leaks being made and it brings one of the biggest Chrome supporters to the team. It’s bad news for us though as we may see leaks on upcoming features drop to a trickle.

source: Google+
via: The Verge

Come comment on this article: King of Chrome Leaks François Beaufort Hired by Google

You might have heard recently about a study finding that liking “curly fries” on Facebook correlates strongly with high intelligence. Publications such as Wired have written about it. Quid Founder and CEO Sean Gourley cited it during a presentation at Structure: Data last week. A faction of the European Union parliament even pointed to the study as yet another reason to prohibit data mining by web companies.

However, if you’re like me, hearing anybody repeat that curly fries data point as fact likely sends shiver down your spine. It’s not that it’s not true — it very well might be — but that it’s nearly useless information without more background.

That’s right, the old correlation versus causation argument is front and center once again. In all the big data world, it’s probably the biggest fallacy there is, no matter how you look at it. No, getting value from big data always doesn’t require giving greater credence to correlation than causation. And, no, relying on correlation isn’t inherently some sort of an ethically or scientifically questionable practice.

Really, the choice between relying on correlation or striving to find causation probably depends on what you’re trying to do.

When there’s nothing at stake, correlate away

Let’s be honest: If all I’m concerned with doing is boosting clickthroughs, selling more products or predicting the movies you want to see, correlations probably will work just fine. I don’t really care why, for example, Mac users book more-expensive rooms on Orbitz — I just care that they do.

You visit my site, my system sees you’re using a Mac (or that you like curly fries, or any other attribute it can associate with you) and it shows you content that it thinks you’ll want to see. It’s not a perfect approach, but it’s probably a far cry better than the old method of just showing everybody the exact same content.

And when you’re collecting potentially petabytes of user data and trying to serve ads in near real time, strong correlations might be about the best things you can hope to find. It’s a volume-and-velocity business, and heavy examinations of why any two (or more) things are related to one another might not always provide a high return on investment.

A more extreme example of when correlations might suffice would be something like machine-to-machine systems that need to make decisions in real-time in order to prevent disasters. The people charged with running these systems might not know why a certain series of events often precedes a particular outcome, but it’s better safe than sorry.

You can’t make a difference — or real decisions — with correlations

But if you’re trying to use big data to make a meaningful difference in the word or to make decisions that can have significant real-world consequences, mere correlations probably won’t cut it. This is what Evgeny Morozov warns about in relation to crime in a recent New York Times column. It’s what Gourley had in mind when talking about data science versus data intelligence. It’s why the current discussion around machine learning almost always includes a human aspect, as well.

Many of the reasons for not acting on correlations alone are based on privacy and a whole collection of civil, constitutional and human rights. You simply can’t profile and then arrest, for example, people based on what their Likes suggest they might be. You probably shouldn’t make decisions about people’s financial, health or general well being based on mere correlations, either.

Heck, I wouldn’t even serve ads that delve into personal information such as health, sexual orientation or intelligence without a very strong reason to believe I was accurate (and express consent to serve those ads). And the Facebook-curly-fries study is full of correlations that could be potential landmines, a small portion of which are visible in the chart below.

But these are all situations where the fear of incorrectly profiling someone occasionally — and being sued as a result — might overpower the desire to do good most of the time. The data Darwinism that my colleague Om Malik wrote about recently extends beyond just peer reviews and social-media ratings, and one shouldn’t take the role of playing God (or catalyst for evolutionary change, to continue the Darwin metaphor) lightly.

Sometimes, though, correlations aren’t enough because you really want to solve a problem or perhaps build a great product. As Gourley explained at Structure: Data, even using correlative data to predict insurgent attacks in a place like Iraq is relatively easy, but predicting the likelihood of events doesn’t stop them. Stopping them requires really understanding and addressing the root causes of the attacks.

The same goes for stopping disease outbreaks, figuring out why programmers make more mistakes during certain seasons, stopping gun violence, or just capitalizing on that knowledge about curly fries or hotel-room bookers in order to build products that touch upon the deeper rationales for liking those things. You can fight the symptoms, so to speak, or you can cure the disease.

So feel free to try selling the next guy you see eating curly fries on a documentary about Dostoevsky, but don’t expect him to care. It might be that there’s some strong connection between curly fries and intelligence; of course, it might also be that intelligent people — entirely coincidentally — tend to live within walking distances of an Arby’s. But no one has asked about that.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tobias Arhelger.

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Google updates just keep on coming. Earlier today new versions of Google+ for Android and iOS pushed out, and I’ve been too busy to handle the goods (Later! Promise!). Two key areas of focus: Sharing and sharing — as in primping photos and being better part of Communities. The updates are somewhat different for both platforms.

In an unsurprising move, the iOS app picks up some features from Snapseed, which Google acquired last autumn. So now, when you’re sharing a photo, you can: “Do basic edits like rotate and crop, as well as select filters like Drama and Retrolux; adjust saturation, contrast, brightness and lots more by sliding your fingers up-and-down, then left-and-right; single tap at any time to compare your creation with the original”, Amar Gandhi, Google+ director of product management, says.

Snapseed remains a separate app for iOS, and that’s where the real Instagram-like photo-editing capabilities can be found.

What about the Android app? He highlights some new features:

• Posts include more text up front — from the original message, and from comments
• Tapping video, photo or link attachments takes you directly to a watch page, lightbox or website
• Image previews are rarely cropped, so you’ll see portrait photos (for instance) in all their glory
• Key actions like +1, reshare and comment are displayed more prominently in each post
• You can swipe through photo albums inline

The Communities component is updated on both platforms. Enhancements include:

• The ability to adjust the volume of community posts in your Home stream
• The option to invite people to a community, or reshare items with a community
• Member search, content moderation, and report-remove-ban support for community managers

Reviews are generally positive on both platforms. Average rating for the new version is 4.5 stars at Apple’s App Store. Overall average is 4.2 stars for all versions on Google Play, where Bryan Lambert writes: “Excellent!! This such a great app, easy to navigate, very smooth and detailed. With the new update looks fabulous, great job Google!”

Amir Abdullah would “take this over facebook twitter and instagram. That’s just my opinion but it just looks better and is the easiest to use. It’s better than I thought it would be. Thinking bout switching. This is the place to go if you do. Shoud’ve done it a long time ago. Stunned. Keep it up”.

But other reviewers see things differently. “Every single release this app gets worse as Google panders to the techTards”, Shane Monroe opines. “Why does EVERYTHING have to look and act like magazine flow? How is it that I can see shifting comments under posts — but I can’t do something simple like LONG PRESS->MUTE a post in my stream? Sigh”.

Similarly, Frank Chagas is “disappointed. Used to use Google+ regularly for news and jokes etc., but latest update killed it for me. Looks better but these Facebook-esque suggestions are a hindrance”.

Google+ for Android 3.6 requires version 2.2 or higher of the operating system. Google+ for iOS 4.2 requires version 5.1 or greater of the operating system.

Dell (DELL) on Monday confirmed that it has received two alternative buyout offers from private equity firm Blackstone (BX) and investor Carl Icahn. It was previously reported that Blackstone was considering a last-minute buyout offer for the struggling computer company that would be higher than Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management’s proposal of $13.65 per share. After conducting due diligence, Blackstone formally proposed an offer to Dell’s board that values the company in excess of $14.25 per share, while Icahn’s offer includes purchasing an additional $2 billion worth of Dell’s stock at $15 per share and offering $2 billion of cash equity financing.

Continue reading…

Certain bacteria can breathe iron like we breathe oxygen. Understanding how they do so will help researchers use the microbes for cleaning up soil contaminants, for trapping carbon dioxide or for making batteries out of bacteria. Now, a team of researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that proteins on the surface of bacteria produce an electric current by simply touching a mineral surface, allowing them to breathe the iron in the rock.

To do so, the team created a simulated bacterium using just the proteins thought to shuttle the electrons from the inside of the microbe to the rock. They inserted these proteins into lipid layers of vesicles, which are small bubbles of lipids such as the ones that make up a bacterial membrane. Using instruments and expertise at EMSL, the Department of Energy’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, the team showed that the proteins protruded through the lipid bubbles in the same way they do in real bacteria, known as Shewanella oneidensis.

Then they tested how well electrons traveled between an electron donor on the inside and an iron-bearing mineral on the outside. The electron transfer rate they measured was fast enough to support bacterial respiration, showing that those proteins were the only ones the bacteria would need to conduct electricity.

In addition to contaminant cleanup and bio-batteries, the finding is important for understanding how carbon works its way through the atmosphere, land and oceans. If researchers understand electron transfer, they can learn how bacteria control the carbon cycle.

The team of researchers included Thomas A Clarke, Gaye White, Julea N Butt, and David J Richardson from the University of East Anglia and Zhi Shi, Liang Shi, Zheming Wang, Alice C Dohnalkova, Matthew J Marshall, James K Fredrickson and John M Zachara at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science and UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Read the entire release from the University of East Anglia.

Few mobile carrier press conferences attract the attention of an Apple or Samsung event, but there are a lot of expectations building around T-Mobile USA’s “Uncarrier” shindig taking place Tuesday morning. T-Mobile hasn’t officially revealed any specifics about what it will announce at 11 a.m. ET at New York’s Art + Technology Center, but there have been a lot of hints, leaks and speculation.

I don’t know for certain what will emerge at the event tomorrow, but I expect we’ll hear at least one, if not all, of the following three revelations:

T-Mobile finally gets the iPhone

The build-up to this single handset announcement has been endless, but tomorrow may well be the day that T-Mobile officially becomes an iPhone retailer. T-Mobile has confirmed the iPhone is coming. It just hadn’t set a date.

According to CNET’s sources, the iPhone will play a prominent role at tomorrow’s event. That’s sweet, but T-Mobile really needs to give specifics on availability and pricing tomorrow or it really shouldn’t even bother mentioning the iconic Apple device. Practically every discussion about T-Mobile USA for the last two years has revolved around when or if it would get the iPhone. As T-Mo has made abundantly clear, it’s getting the iPhone. The only thing we want to know is when we can buy it.

LTE goes live

This one is almost a given. T-Mobile has promised we’ll see a live LTE network this month, and there are only a few more days left in March. We’ve already seen a big spike in LTE testing activity in eight major cities across the country, and TMoNews has obtained internal documents indicating T-Mobile will launch in seven markets this week.

Either way, the carrier is well ahead of schedule. After its planned merger with AT&T flopped, T-Mobile launched an ambitious spectrum-refarming project designed to give it an LTE network in the second half of 2013. The impending launch of the iPhone, however, gives its LTE rollout new urgency since it wants to support the iPhone 5’s full radio capabilities as soon as it goes on sale.

Death to all device subsidies

New CEO John Legere has promised T-Mobile will remake the mobile industry by ending its long practice of heavily discounting devices in exchange for long-term pricey service contracts.

We’ve already seen the basic framework of that strategy emerge over the last year in T-Mobile’s Value plans, which still require contracts but offer much lower voice and data rates. Over the weekend, T-Mobile revamped its Value plans once again, making unlimited voice and SMS standard on all pricing tiers.

What we’re still waiting to hear about are the specifics of T-Mobile’s big strategy – to see whether it can truly separate service from the handset. Many operators have complained about the subsidy system in the past, but so far T-Mobile is the only major U.S. carrier to do anything about it.

What I’m waiting to see is whether T-Mobile truly follows through on its commitment to eliminating subsidies completely or if it just maintains its current policy of offering unsubsidized plans as an option. If it’s the former, T-Mo would take a huge risk, but it could change the U.S. mobile industry for the better.

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Fenwick & West’s annual seed financing study found that the Series A crunch has worsened. The survey found that 45% of companies receiving seed funding in 2010 raised a Series A funding by the end of 2011. But only 27% of companies receiving seed funding in 2011 had raised a Series A funding by the end of 2012. What’s more, nearly a quarter of companies funded in 2011 raised follow-on seed financing compared with just 12% the year before.

PRESS RELEASE

The post Series A Crunch Worsens appeared first on peHUB.

Back before Facebook really took off, people were all abuzz about Ning, a social network co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini in 2004 that raised more than $100 million in its first five years. But the site hit the social market perhaps a little too soon, and has largely faded from prominence, having been acquired by Glam Media in September 2011 and made various attempts at a comeback.

Now, Glam is trying another such iteration, re-vamping Ning for the modern social era as a personal blogging platform for brands and people to pull together their existing social media followers in one place. But while the concept itself isn’t a bad idea, it’s definitely a crowded arena for Ning to enter — and the site will be charging users to boot.

WordPress and Tumblr are still huge for traditional blogging, and sites like Medium, Branch, Quora, and LinkedIn have all moved into the publishing area as well recently. (I expressed some skepticism about Quora’s move into publishing recently, and Quora is free.)

Ning’s general manager Bernard Desarnauts described it to me as the place where someone with a lot of existing social media followers would bring them together for discussion on one platform, and allow the brand to not worry as much about building new followers on the social media site of the moment. He said Ning still has about 60 million monthly active users.

“Ning itself was not a bad idea, it was just way too early. This notion of people really understanding the power of social, and the ability to commit the time and resources, which was the core of what Ning offers, was too early five or six years ago,” he said. “But publishing is key to social. While the previous version of Ning was very much about community, we’ve really focused this new version of Ning around content publishing, but also how you intertwine publishing with community.”

However, at this point investing in Twitter and Facebook (with its 1 billion active users) as a social media strategy seems like a pretty solid plan for most people. And Ning will likely have difficulties getting users to pay for its service when it’s not exactly an established platform, although it is offering modern publishing features like responsive design and analytics. However, the fact that Ning is moving to a blogging platform as a plan for making money certainly indicates that social companies see publishing as a solid bet, a larger trend that my colleague Mathew Ingram wrote about. Maybe it’s a sign that content is getting cool.

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