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The Chris Gethard Show is a talk show featuring some of my friends in New York. It runs once a month, Saturday at midnight at the UCB Theatre. I don’t know much about it, but it penetrated my brain this week when I noticed a link that Chris posted on facebook.

I next heard a little bit about it on the January 4th UCBTNY Podcast featuring John Frusciante and Will Hines. Anyway, I thought I would just post something to plug the show and share the video. It’s quite fun. Enjoy.

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for another Palm Press, our weekly look at the world of Palm. The big Palm press event during the CES last week was full of pomp and flair, although minus the huge excitement from a year earlier when the Pre was first announced. Palm confirmed the two new model refreshes in the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. The two new phones will be improved versions of the original, the only real surprise being they will be exclusive to the Verizon network in the U.S., something Sprint must not be too happy about.

A new webOS update, 1.3.5.2, was quietly released for the Pre in Germany, and if reports are accurate this update enables tethering the phone to a laptop. The tethering works over Bluetooth, a good wireless method for connecting two devices. It doesn’t appear to make any other changes, but tethering itself is worthy of an update. Let’s hope Pres all over get the tethering update, but I’ll bet carriers have a thing to say about that.

Smartphone owners can attest to the difficulty in keeping informed about new apps hitting any app store, and the Palm App Catalog is no exception. But tracking new additions just got a lot easier with the RSS feeds that Palm has enabled. You can track new additions to the Catalog, or just updates. Now if we could only get more apps in the Catalog to track.

The New York Times has an article today with the headline, “Justice Department Fights Bias In Lending.” Without thinking too deeply about it, I assumed that this meant certain groups of Americans weren’t being given as many loans as others or worse terms. That led to my worrying that “bias” here could just be better termed “underwriting standards.” And, indeed, if the article did criticize lenders for not giving loans to individuals with lower incomes and/or worse credit records, then I would have been right.

But it actually involves the opposite situation: too many loans being given to people with low income and poor credit histories. The solution there, however, would probably more effectively addressed by additional regulation than the Justice Department.

To be sure, this is a counterintuitive concept. Why would lenders want to give more loans to people who would be less likely to pay them? Of course, you only need to look back to subprime mortgage fiasco during the housing boom to find an answer. Yet, then it was assumed that those loans actually would perform well, since the housing market was booming. Now that’s changed, but lenders are still giving out loans to borrowers who can’t afford them. Why?

The New York Times explains:

While past lending discrimination cases primarily focused on “redlining” — a bank’s refusal to lend to qualified borrowers in minority areas — the new push will instead center on a more recent phenomenon critics have called “reverse redlining.”

In reverse redlining, a mortgage brokerage or bank systematically singles out minority neighborhoods for loans with inferior terms like high up-front fees, high interest rates and lax underwriting practices. Because the original lender would typically resell such a loan after collecting its fees, it did not care about the risk of foreclosure.

What we’ve got here is an incentives problem. Many lenders ultimately sell the mortgages or other loans they originate to others, and along with them goes the default risk. One solution often mentioned is to force lenders to keep some skin in the game and retain a portion of the risk for the loans they originate. The problem with that idea, however, is that it will make credit more expensive, since lenders will have to hold additional capital against that risk.

But if we lived in a world where lenders weren’t able to collect up-front fees, then they wouldn’t originate as many bad loans — even if sold. Imagine the following scenarios where a mortgage broker originates a $100,000 loan to a borrower with poor credit:

Scenario 1 (with fees, subprime borrower):

The broker also gets a $5,000 fee for originating the loan. He then sells it to a bank that pays him $96,000 for the loan, the present value of the loan to the bank based on its internal cost of capital and default risk assumption. But that’s okay with the broker, because he still makes $1,000 on it, thanks to the fees.

Scenario 2 (without fees, subprime borrower):

The broker gets no fee for originating the loan. He then attempts to sell it to a bank. But the bank will only pay him $96,000 for the loan, given the inherent risk. Uh oh. The broker realizes that this isn’t a good business and immediately becomes a mailman instead — a good, clean living.

Sounds great right? Not necessarily. We may want a world in which you could still have honest mortgage brokers to originate good mortgages. Luckily, they probably won’t all opt to be mailmen, as I joked. Instead, imagine yet another scenario — the one we want!

Scenario 3 (without fees, prime borrower):

The broker gets no fee for originating the loan. He then sells it to a bank. That bank will pay him $101,000 for the loan, because it has good credit quality and, consequently, a much lower risk profile. That lower likelihood of default means the bank will profit on the loan through the interest payments that will continue for the life of the loan.

A framework without origination fees would result in the loan’s risk being taken better into account because the original broker could only profit by selling loans with present values that exceed their principal values. With fees, you have the bizarre situation where loans are sometimes originated with negative net present values. That makes no sense. Eliminating origination fees would get rid of the ridiculous incentive to originate as many loans as possible, no matter their quality.

Chris Brogan, Dan Schawbel to Keynote March 4-5, 2010 Loyola University

Combating the “stadium” setting of huge, impersonal conferences in labrynthian venues, Soho Seminars put together a high-impact social media conference designed to actually connect attendees with speakers.

Loyola University will host the two day conference beginning March 4, 2010.

Attendance is limited, and the “Town Hall” format will frame open discussion and free exchange of ideas around the ever-swirling topics of brand management.

Cd Vann, founder of Soho Publishing and Soho Seminars, has found that, “Over the past six years, the focus has been more on personal profiles and personal branding.

However, when we go to a BNI, Chamber or any other face to face business networking event, people ask us what we do. We have less than 60 seconds to communicate our brand.

At sohobiztube.com, Magazine Soho and Soho Seminars, the focus is on how to effectively incorporate social media strategies and tactics, using new media to enhance your marketing, PR and Customer Service actives, while also understanding the importance of recruiting the right personal brand (brand ambassadors) who will deliver your brand’s message and promise to your client or customer.”

Day one will feature a Town Hall Meeting with Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. The meeting will be focused on “The Co-alignment of the Corporate and Personal Brand – How It Affects Team & Leadership.”

Chris Brogan is the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency which also hosts the Inbound Marketing Summit.

His blog, “ChrisBrogan.com” is listed as one of the top ten in the Advertising Age Power150 as well as in the top 100 of Technorati.

Day two will feature a Town Hall Meeting with Dan Schawbel. Dan is a leading Gen-Y personal branding expert. He is the author of the best-selling career-book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 2009) and the founder of Personal Branding Blog®.

At 25 years old, Dan is BusinessWeek’s youngest columnist. He is also a featured contributor to Mashable, LifeHack, and MediaPost and he has written articles for BrandWeek Magazine and Advertising Age.

Dan is “The champion of personal branding” according to Alan Webber, co-founder, Fast Company Magazine.

Other topics include:

• Using Personal Profiles to Recruit Brand Ambassadors (moderated by Brett Farmiloe of Jobing.com, Phoenix, AZ)
• Web 3.0: PDAs, Personal Profiles, Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers and the Corporate Brand.
• Who Owns? Who Manages? Who Decides? (moderated by Steve Glynn of Spreenkler, Milwaukee, WI), and
• Blasphemy, Defamation of Character, When to Discipline, How to Discipline (moderated by Attorney Diana Matigian, Chicago, IL).

And that’s just day one.

On organizing the event, Vann is frank: “Let’s face it, businesses (brands) are what we consume every day. We advertise, market and promote our brands (products and services). And this is my passion, assisting businesses with communicating what they are passionate about, their brand to the clients and customers they want brand loyalty from.”

“It’s the former military in me,” she continues. “It’s all about message, commitment and promise. Once you communicate these effectively to your internal team, only then can they live and breathe this promise via a well developed external marketing, PR and recruiting campaign.”

Registration for the 2-day conference is $699, and includes ‘The Draft; your own social media communications policy’ customized with the professional expertise of AskHRS consultants.

For details and registration visit sohobiztube.com (early bird and Social Media Club Chicago discount rates available).

About Soho Seminars

Soho Publishing, LLC (sohobiztube.com) started in May of 2005. The main product was Magazine Soho, Entrepreneurial Profiles, Social Media and Business.

In March of 2009, they officially completed sohobiztube.com, a multimedia delivery platform for marketing, promoting and position businesses.

How is it different then Linkedin? The focus and profile is on the brand, products, services and employees and not the personal brand. Companies need to focus on why they are in business and what they are promising to their clients and customers.

May of 2009, Soho Publishing,LLC had Milwaukee’s first, one day social media seminar featuring Zappos VP. Soho Seminars presents “Aligning Your Personal and Corporate Brands” March 4-5, 2010.

By Bill Quigley

1. Allow all Haitians in the U.S. to work. The number one source of money
for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the U.S. back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the U.S. will
continue to help when the world community moves on to other problems.

2. Do not allow U.S.
military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Hungry
Haitians are not the enemy. Decisions
have already been made that will militarize the humanitarian relief — but do
not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Do not demonize the people.

3. Give Haiti grants as
help, not loans. Haiti does not
need any more debt. Make sure that the
relief given helps Haiti rebuild its public sector so the country can provide its own citizens with
basic public services.

4. Prioritize
humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the
line. If they are moved to the back of
the line, start at the back.


5. President Obama
can enact Temporary Protected Status for Haitians with the stroke of a
pen. Do it. The U.S. has already done it for El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Somalia. President Obama should do it on Martin Luther
King Day.

6. Respect human rights from day one. The U.N. has enacted
Guiding Principles for Internally Displaced People. Make them required reading for every official
and non-governmental person and organization. Non governmental organizations like charities and international aid
groups are extremely powerful in Haiti — they too must respect the
human dignity and human rights of all people.
[Ed. Note: For more on the U.N.’s Guiding Principles, see the Institute’s January 2008 report.]

7. Apologize to
the Haitian people everywhere for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.


8. Release all
Haitians in U.S. jails who are not accused of any crimes. Thirty thousand people are facing
deportations. No one will be deported to Haiti for years to come. Release them on
Martin Luther King Day.

9. Require that
all the non-governmental organizations that raise money in the U.S. be transparent about what they raise and where
the money goes, and insist that they be legally accountable to the people of Haiti.


10. Treat all
Haitians as we ourselves would want to be treated.

Bill Quigley is legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. A friend of the Institute for Southern Studies and longtime contributor to Facing South, Quigley is a Katrina survivor who has been active in human rights work for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

David Spiegelhalter‘s Personal Home Page. 

Professor Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge

Understanding Uncertainty and Risk

I work with a small team, all part time, comprising Arciris Garay-Arevalo (administration and research), Hauke Riesch (social scientist), Mike Pearson and Ian Short (web and animation), and Owen Smith (web). Our work focuses on the appropriate use of quantitative methods in dealing with risk and uncertainty in the lives of individuals and society. Our work falls into the broad category of ‘public understanding of science’, while our work with schools can be considered as ‘maths outreach’. However we try to take a view of the subject that extends beyond the application of probability and statistics, acknowledging that there are deeper uncertainties that cannot be easily put into a formal framework, and that social and psychological issues necessarily play a vital role. (more at link).

This leads to the following useful link:

Welcome to Understanding Uncertainty
Posted November 29th, 2007
Welcome to the site that tries to make sense of chance, risk, luck, uncertainty and probability. Mathematics won’t tell us what to do, but we think that understanding the numbers can help us deal with our own uncertainty and allow us to look critically at stories in the media.

David Spiegelhalter’s Personal Home Page

KNOXVILLE — More than 150 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, students will pitch in around the community to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., on Saturday, Jan. 23, with the campus’ annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

UT students are invited to participate in the TeamVOLS event from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Registration will run from 8 to 8:30 a.m. Register online by 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21. Breakfast and lunch will be provided to participants, and a limited number of T-shirts will be available.

At 9 a.m., students will be bused to service projects throughout Knoxville, including Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries, Ijams Nature Center, Habitat for Humanity, the Florence Crittenden Agency, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, Love Kitchen, Ronald McDonald House and others.

Students will return to campus for lunch and to hear from keynote speaker Avon William Rollins Sr.

Rollins, director and CEO of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center Inc. in Knoxville, has a long history of civil rights involvement. A co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Rollins was associated with King as well as Malcolm X. As a result of his civil rights activities across the South, he has been incarcerated approximately 31 times. He has assisted in creating more than 20 grassroots community development organization minority leadership programs in more than 10 cities in the southeastern United States.

Along with his role at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Rollins is president and CEO of Knoxville-based Rollins & Associates Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in economic development and labor relations. He also is on the board of the East Tennessee Cancer Society and is an advocate for proactive health care. He has received accolades and recognition from various national, state and local organizations including the National Business League and the Booker T. Washington Foundation. The National Civil Rights Museum of Memphis, in cooperation with the East Tennessee Minority Professional Association, dedicated its annual Heritage Award in honor of him. He has twice received the Minority Business Advocate Award presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

TeamVOLS serves as UT Knoxville’s volunteer center, aiming to provide students with active community service and outreach opportunities in order to become proactive participants in their communities. Along with the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, TeamVOLS coordinates alternative spring and fall break trips, outreach with community organizations and many more service opportunities. To learn about TeamVOLS programs, visit http://teamvols.utk.edu/programs.php.

—

C O N T A C T :

Rebekah Winkler (865-974-8304, [email protected])

This afternoon we tracked down Doug Van Sandt, an attorney and self-described amateur economist with a peculiarly prescient claim to fame.

In the letters pages of The Atlantic magazine he made a wager with James Glassman and Kevin Hassett, the authors of a book titled “Dow 36,000,” that after a decade the Dow would be closer to 11,000 than 36,000.

That was 10 years ago. The Dow is now below 11,000. Van Sandt won the bet.

“I haven’t heard from them,” Van Sandt told us. “I was preparing to send them each emails. I assume they’ll pay up.”

In the letter, Van Sandt wrote: “I would be willing to bet Glassman and Hassett that even ten years from now, when earnings and dividends should have nearly doubled, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will still be closer to its current level of 11,000 than to their hyperbolic projection of 36,000.”

Glassman and Hasset replied: “To J. Douglas Van Sant we say, if the Dow is closer to 10,000 than to 36,000 ten years from now, we will each give $1,000 to the charity of your choice.”

Van Sandt said he hadn’t decided which charity the money should go to.

How did Van Sandt know the Dow 36,000 thesis was wrong?

“Their thesis was that because stocks had out performed bonds over the long run, there should be no risk premium. There’s an obvious fallacy here,” he told us. “Government bonds have a certainty to them that stocks don’t have. We were in an enormous stock market bubble. Their book was a product of the times.”

Van Sandt says he reads a lot of economics, especially on market pricing, and attends academic economic conference. His favorite economist is John Maynard Keynes.

“He described the stock market as a casino. I think there’s a lot to that notion,” Van Sandt said.

Of course we had to ask the guy who correctly called this market where he thought we were going in the next ten years.

“We’re in really disturbed times right now. I’m looking at Japan and their experience and wondering if we’re the next Japan,” he said.

But he was optimistic enough to think that we’re not necessarily facing another lost decade on the stock market. 

“I have a pretty optimistic view of things, and a faith in the ability of America to recover,” he said. “The market will grow with the country, around two to three percent a year. In ten years we’ll be between Dow 15,000 and 20,000.”

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Authors Of Dow 36,000 Just Lost A Ten Year Old $1,000 Bet

Tyler Cowen suggests that Haiti, as a nation, may have just effectively ceased to exist.  Haiti, as a people, is still there.  But the institutions that made up the Haitian nation state, and its economy, have literally been flattened.  Aid agencies usually work through local governments, which already have distribution systems for hospitals and so forth.  But the local government in this case does not really seem to exist at the moment; it has been hollowed out by deaths.  The main port seems to have suffered heavy damage, and while flights are making it to the airport, there’s no one there to unload. 

This has made it attractive for some of Cowen’s commenters to argue that we should basically take the army in there and run the place:  make it Iraq II, without the resistance.  But the reason that Iraq failed is not primarily that Al Qaeda wanted to run the place (they failed too).  The reason it failed is that it’s really hard to impose good institutions on someone else’s country, not to mention paternalistic.  Why are we supposed to be able to do better this time?  Because they practice voodoo instead of Islam?  There will be plenty of local power-brokers who will be happy to resist any top-down imposition of an outside institutional structure.  I probably would too.

On the other hand,  in the short term, the initial reports make it seem like we’re going to have to impose some sort of order just to distribute aid.  At this point, we can assume that people are already dying from lack of medical care, clean water, and relief supplies, and the losses will mount geometrically as days pass.  But there is no one to tell anyone what to do, and no way to tell them, as all communications seem to be knocked out.  Until they’re restored, Haiti is effectively in the eighteenth century.

But in the longer run, what do you do for a country that already had one of the worst-functioning governments in the world?  Half the budget was provided by foreign aid before the earthquake.  For the next few years, we will effectively hold government power there, whether we want to or not, because we’ll probably essentially be providing all of its funding, and can threaten to turn the taps off unless things go as we demand.

This has made it attractive for some of Cowen’s commenters to argue that we should basically take the army in there and run the place:  make it Iraq II, without the resistance.  But the reason that Iraq failed is not primarily that Al Qaeda wanted to run the place (they failed, too.)  The reason it failed is that it’s really hard to impose good institutions on someone else’s country, not to mention paternalistic.  Why are we supposed to be able to do better this time?  Because they practice voodoo instead of Islam?  There will be plenty of local power-brokers who will be happy to resist any top-down imposition of an outside institutional structure.  I probably would too.

On the other hand,  in the short term, the initial reports make it seem like we’re going to have to impose some sort of order just to distribute aid.  At this point, we can assume that people are already dying from lack of medical care, clean water, and relief supplies, and the losses will mount geometrically as days pass.  But there is no one to tell anyone what to do, and no way to tell them, as all communications seem to be knocked out.  Until they’re restored, Haiti is effectively in the eighteenth century.

But in the longer run, what do you do for a country that already had one of the worst-functioning governments in the world?  Half the budget was provided by foreign aid before the earthquake.  For the next few years, we will effectively hold government power there, whether we want to or not, because we’ll probably essentially be providing all of its funding, and can threaten to turn the taps off unless things go as we demand.

Rumors about the Fiat Uno’s comeback to some emerging markets seem to be true, as we can see in the pictures posted by Novidades Automobiles, which have apparently been obtained from the Brazilian Trademark Office.

The images show a pre-production model so you shouldn’t worry and plan to hide your children on the car’s reveal day as it is a known fact that this kind of prototypes aren’t the prettiest automotive creations in the world. You shouldn’t be to happy either, because such a low cost… (read more)

A robust new technique for screening drugs’ effects on zebrafish behavior is pointing Harvard University scientists toward unexpected compounds and pathways that may govern sleep and wakefulness in humans.

Among the scientists’ more intriguing findings, described in the journal Science, are that various anti-inflammatory agents in the immune system, long known to induce sleep during infection, may also shape normal sleep/wake cycles.

The new research identifies several compounds with surprising effects on sleep and wakefulness in zebrafish. But it also suggests that despite the evolutionary gap between zebrafish and mammals, they may be strikingly similar in the neurochemistry underlying their rest/wake cycles, meaning that these same compounds may prove effective in people.

“Many current drug discovery efforts rely on screening conducted outside the body,” said Alexander F. Schier, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard. “Although such screens can be successful, they cannot recreate the complex neuroscience of entire organisms. These limitations are particularly acute for behavior-altering drugs, because brain activity cannot be modeled in a Petri dish or test tube.”

Together with postdoctoral fellows Jason Rihel and David Prober, Schier and other collaborators used their automated screening technique to monitor sleep and wakefulness in zebrafish for two days following administration of 5,600 compounds, creating more than 60,000 distinct behavioral profiles. By applying clustering algorithms to organize the molecules, the researchers identified 463 drug candidates that significantly altered rest and wakefulness, many of which had not previously been known to have such effects.

“For instance, we found that a diverse set of anti-inflammatory compounds increased wakefulness during the day, with much less effect at night,” Schier said. “Although these compounds have long been known to promote sleep during infection, this is an indication that the molecules that regulate the immune system may also play a role in setting normal daytime activity levels.”

Anti-inflammatory agents found to affect sleep/wake cycles included cytokines, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and the immunosuppressant cyclosporine. Schier and colleagues also found calcium channel inhibitors that increased rest with minimal effects on waking behavior and a class of potassium channel blockers found in a wide variety of drugs — including antimalarials, antipsychotics, and antihistamines — that selectively increased wakefulness at night without affecting total rest.

“Behavioral profiling reveals nuanced relationships between drugs and their targets,” Schier said. “It can characterize large classes of compounds and reveal differences in effectiveness, potential side effects, and combinatorial properties that might not otherwise be detected.”

Schier and his colleagues plan to expand their zebrafish screening to include many more uncharacterized compounds and to assay behaviors that, in humans, are associated with psychiatric disorders.

Schier’s co-authors on the Science paper are Jason Rihel, David A. Prober, Anthony Arvanites, Kelvin Lam, Steven Zimmerman, Sumin Jang, and Lee L. Rubin, all at Harvard; Stephen J. Haggerty of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); David Kokel of MGH; and Randall T. Peterson of the Broad Institute, MGH, and Harvard Medical School.

The work was funded by the Life Sciences Research Foundation, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.

KNOXVILLE — Student organizations at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will commemorate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., on Monday, Jan. 18, with a celebration titled Carrying On the Dream.

Beginning at 4 p.m. in the University Center Auditorium, the event will feature performances from many student organizations including the Love United Gospel Choir, Strange Fruit on Stage Productions, the Ice Cold Experience (I.C.E.) Jazz Quartet, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and many more. During the “Reflections from the Generations” segment, audience members will hear personal stories of King’s impact from students, faculty and staff.

Carrying On the Dream is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in the University Center Ballroom.

The event is sponsored by the Black Cultural Programming Committee within the Office of Minority Student Affairs. Founded in 1979, the committee aims to develop programs and activities that enhance public awareness of African-Americans and their accomplishments, encourage the interaction and unity of African-American students, provide opportunities for African-American students to be actively involved in the academic and local communities and serve as a catalyst to motivate African American students’ self-development, discovery and esteem during their educational careers at the university.

For more information or disability accommodations, contact the Office of Minority Student Affairs at 865-974-6861.

—

C O N T A C T :

Rebekah Winkler (865-974-8304, [email protected])

Demetrius Richmond (865-974-6861, [email protected])

January 14, 2010: 08:27 AM ET

SPONSOR

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Kraft Foods Inc. ‘s (KFT) latest attempt to win over investors in Cadbury PLC (CBY) met with a lukewarm reception and shareholders are instead pinning their hopes on a rival bid from Hershey Co. (HSY), people familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.

Kraft’s chief executive Irene Rosenfeld has spent the last few days meeting with key investors in London as time runs out for the U.S. food giant to increase its GBP10 billion bid for the U.K. confectioner.

“She said nothing particularly interesting or new,” said an investor who attended one of the meetings.

“What is clear is that shareholders want between 800 pence and 850 pence and as much cash as possible–no-one wants Kraft shares,” the investor added.

Kraft’s formal bid–the only one on the table–offers Cadbury shareholders 300 pence in cash and 0.2589 new Kraft shares for each Cadbury share. It is made up of 60% stock and 40% cash.

Following an agreement to sell its U.S. and Canadian frozen pizza business to Nestle S.A. (NESN.VX), the Swiss consumer giant, for $3.7 billion Jan.5, Kraft said it was going to give Cadbury shareholders a “partial cash alternative” to its existing offer.

The new proposal, which has yet to be formalized, offers 60 pence per Cadbury share, bringing the cash part of the deal to 360 a share. Kraft did not say how much the stock element of the cash-and-shares bid would reduce by, but insisted that the increased cash element did not represent a “raised offer.” This suggests the stock element of the deal will be cut.

Cadbury dismissed this altered offer which it said “remains derisory” and investors are similarly unimpressed, hoping that U.S.-based Hershey will come in with a higher offer including a larger cash element.

“My gut feeling is that Kraft will raise its offer to between 835 pence and 850 pence a share. If Hershey then comes in higher, as it must if it serious about a bid, then Kraft will have to think hard,” said another investor who was at the meeting.

Rosenfeld gave every indication that Kraft needs the scale and scope that a takeover of Cadbury would bring, especially the U.K. group’s presence in emerging markets, the investor said. Kraft could definitely pay 900 pence but won’t unless forced to, he added.

Kraft has until Jan. 19 to raise its bid while any rival bids must be in by Jan. 23.

Hershey is continuing to work toward a bid for Cadbury, according to media reports and despite other reports that Italian chocolate maker Ferrero Spa has decided not to participate in a joint offer. A spokesman for Hershey declined to comment.

“Shares have risen on the possibility of a Hershey bid and we are hoping for more cash as well as a higher bid,” said one investor who had earlier suggested its fund would sell if any bid reached 800 pence..

Shares in Cadbury at 1230 GMT Thursday were up 0.8% or 7 pence and at 796 pence, having reversed a decline over the last week which saw the E.U. clear Kraft’s bid, Nestle pull out of the auction and Warren Buffett, Kraft’s biggest shareholder, say his holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) wouldn’t support the issuance of new Kraft stock to pay for a Cadbury acquisition.

Kraft’s stock closed down 1.6% at $29.23 Wednesday, making its offer for Cadbury worth 764 pence a share and valuing the U.K. company at GBP10.5 billion, or $17.1 billion.

-By Marietta Cauchi, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 207 842 9241; marietta.cauchi@ dowjones.com

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

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Mathematician Sophie Morel, who works at the intersection of algebraic geometry, representation theory, and number theory, has been named professor of mathematics in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). She also has been appointed to the Radcliffe Alumnae Professorship at the University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Morel was previously affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., where she continues as a research fellow. The new appointments took effect Dec. 15.

“Sophie Morel is among the world’s most promising young mathematicians working in number theory, algebraic geometry, and representation theory,” said Jeremy Bloxham, dean of science in FAS. “Her doctoral thesis was extremely demanding and stunningly original, solving a problem that had been intractable for more than 20 years.”

“Sophie Morel will enrich the Radcliffe Institute and FAS communities, and Harvard more broadly, with her groundbreaking research and discoveries in mathematics,” said Radcliffe Institute Dean Barbara J. Grosz. “We are grateful to Radcliffe alumnae for enabling the recruitment of a distinguished scholar who embodies Radcliffe’s longstanding traditions of excellence and achievement.”

Morel’s work focuses at the heart of the Langlands problem, an area of number theory and representation theory that has seen dramatic progress over the past few decades.

Morel holds degrees from Université Paris-Sud, which awarded her a Ph.D. in 2005. From 2005 to 2009 she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute, an affiliation she will maintain until 2011.

Professorships at the Radcliffe Institute are designed to bring a succession of eminent individuals to the institute and to attract outstanding faculty to tenured Harvard positions. The Radcliffe Alumnae Professorship, endowed by alumnae and friends of Radcliffe, was established so that new tenured FAS professors could spend four semesters at the institute during their first five years at the University. As the second Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, Morel will work among the institute’s community of fellows.

The Nereus can take orders through a 25-mile-long fiber-optic cable, but if that snaps, it can find its way back to the mother ship.