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Three independent bookstores have filed a class action suit against Amazon and all of the big-six publishers, alleging that the proprietary digital rights management tools Amazon uses on ebooks serve to create a monopoly. The indies, represented by Los Angeles antitrust firm Blecher & Collins say publisher contracts calling for the use of this DRM, which like most forms of DRM prohibits readers from copying ebooks or reading them on non-authorized devices, restrain ebook sales and that Amazon “has unlawfully monopolized or attempted to monopolize the market for ebooks in the United States.”

The case was filed in New York’s Southern District court (which also oversaw the Department of Justice’s antitrust suit on ebook pricing) on February 15 and was first noticed by the Huffington Post Thursday afternoon. The named plaintiffs are Manhattan-based Posman Books, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Fiction Addiction of Greenville, South Carolina; they seek to represent “all other similarly situated independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.”

The filing cites estimated market share for Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Apple’s iBookstore as evidence that Amazon has a “dominant position” in the ebook market. The estimations cited are generally accepted in the publishing industry — over 60 percent for Amazon’s Kindle e-readers, around 25 percent for Nook and under 10 percent for the iBookstore (though some believe that Apple’s market share has grown ). The filing says Nook is Kindle’s “only substantial competition” but, in reference to recent news and earnings reports, notes Barnes & Noble is “experiencing financial difficulties and will be downsizing by closing a significant portion of their brick-and-mortar bookstores.” The filing doesn’t mention Kobo, but Posman, Book House and Fiction Addiction all sell Kobo ebooks through the company’s partnership with the American Booksellers Association.

To be clear, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple also sell ebooks with DRM on them. Barnes & Noble and Kobo use Adobe DRM, and Apple uses its own proprietary DRM on ebooks — but that appears not to be at issue in this case because of Apple’s reportedly small ebook market share. (The filing does mention that Apple doesn’t use DRM on music.) Rather, the filing takes issue with Amazon’s proprietary DRM, AZW: “Ebooks with the AZW DRM can only be read on a Kindle device or on another device enabled with a Kindle application…the Kindle app works solely with ebooks sold by Amazon.” While the case names only the big-six publishers as defendants, Amazon places its DRM on nearly all of its ebooks from all publishers.

The filing says that big-six publishers, through their contracts with Amazon that allow for Amazon’s proprietary DRM on their ebooks, “unreasonably restrain trade and commerce in the market for ebooks” in violation of the Sherman Act,” and claims “consumers have been injured because they have been deprived of choice and also denied the benefits of innovation and competition resulting from the foreclosure of independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.”

Most of the filing, though, is spent on Amazon, which the plaintiffs accuse of purposely creating a monopoly on ebooks in the United States. According to the filing:

The aforesaid conduct and acts of Amazon and the big six were engaged in by Amazon with the purpose and intent: (1) to injure, suppress, destroy and irreparably harm Plaintiffs and the other Class Members in the relevant market; (2) to monopolize the market for the sale of ebooks in the United States; (3) to reduce or eliminate sales of ebooks by Plaintiffs and the other Class Members; (4) to control prices; (5) to reduce the variety of offerings that would otherwise be available to consumers; and (6) to unlawfully monopolize trade and commerce in said relevant market.

The plaintiffs seek an injunction “prohibiting Amazon and the big six from publishing and selling ebooks with device and app specific DRMs and further requiring the big six to allow independent brick-and-mortar bookstores to directly sell open-source DRM ebooks published by the big six.” Alyson Decker, the Blecher & Collins attorney overseeing the case, told me that independent bookstores’ agreements to sell ebooks through Kobo aren’t sufficient: “My understanding is that the Big Six do not currently have any direct agreements for ebooks with independent brick and mortar bookstores comparable to the agreements they have entered into with them for traditional books. While some independent brick and mortar bookstores are able to sell ebooks for Kobo, my understanding is that that agreement is with Kobo and not directly with the big six.”

Many independent bookstores may lack the technical knowledge and infrastructure to be able to sell ebooks straight from the publishers, but the filing doesn’t get into details on exactly how such a system would work. Decker said she couldn’t comment specifically on the type of “open-source DRM” that the plaintiffs seek.

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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Is Amazon The New Self-Publish Kingpin?
• Connected consumer third-quarter 2012

Sony had an event today and as expected, it introduced the PlayStation 4. The next-gen platform is designed to shift focus from the living room to the gamer, Sony said, and overall, PlayStation’s approach is meant to make it possible for gamers to play wherever they want, whenever they want.

PS4 lead system architect Mark Cerny talked about how the evolution of the PS4 came about, saying it began five years ago, earlier on in the life of the PS3. The PS3 was a first step, which was designed to connect to a variety of services, but it was limited because of how early it launched in that world, Cerny said.

“Much less value is found today in blast processing or a system-on-a-chip,” Cerny said. He suggested tech could interfere with design innovation. The tech remains important, he stressed, but the idea was to create a platform that was all about experience. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a tune Apple and Steve Jobs started playing years ago when they realized the spec race was a nonstarter in the mobile phone world.

“By game creators, for game creators. It is a powerful and accessible system,” Cerny said on stage, suggesting that this time around there was a strong emphasis on ease of development, hence the use of a standard x86 PC CPU. The GPU is designed for use with “practical tasks,” he said, with the overall goal of making development a painless experience.

Essentially, the PS4 is an advanced, x86-based personal computer, which means that it should be easy for developers to build. All of this is clearly an answer to a major complaint from studios about the previous generation, which was infamously tricky to master from a software perspective.

Sony also unveiled a redesigned DualShock 4 controller, which has the Vita-style touchpad depicted in rumors, ad works with a 3D “stereo” camera accessory to track its movements in a loose approximation of what’s possible with Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect.

The hardware is clearly also borrowing some tricks from mobile games. It has save states that allow users to quickly freeze and resume gameplay, without having to save just by switching on and off the console. There’s also background downloading, which allows digital titles to be played before they’re even completely on your local drive.

Social is another key tentpole for the PS4, according to Cerny. He described a new function that allows you to quickly pause and upload gameplay videos as easily as you might have done with static screenshots in the past. There’s also spectator functionality for watching “celebrities” gaming, something which seems to have been borrowed from Twitter’s success with famous members. Networking will also be based around real names and profile pictures, instead of strictly on gamer tags and avatars, too, and all of this will plug into mobile apps to help gamers stay in touch.

Open-source, cross-platform EPUB creator Sigil 0.7.0 has been released, sporting a number of major new features. These include finished versions of the Live Preview, Clips and spellcheck features.

The new version also sports a new HTML rendering engine, Qt 5, but remains an EPUB 2 editor, despite the inclusion of EPUB 3 features such as audio and video support. Support for EPUB 3 (as well as backwards compatibility with EPUB 2) is noted as in development for a future release.

Sigil 0.7.0 debuts the finished version of Live Preview, a dockable window that displays the results of editing in real time – it also continues to show the content from the last HTML tab opened by the user, allowing changes to auxiliary files such as CSS to be viewed as they’re updated. The Live Preview window can even be dragged on to a second monitor.

The spellcheck function is another feature-complete highlight in the new release. Clicking the spellcheck button now opens a dedicated dialog box containing a list of all misspelled words along with an option to display all words – clicking a word reveals its first occurrence in the document; double-click to move to the next. A tooltip provides a count of the unique number of words in the document, while support for multiple dictionaries is also added.

There are two notable improvements to Sigil’s support for multiple clipboard entries: the addition of a new, optional Clip Bar providing toolbar buttons for selecting the first 20 Clips in a user’s collection, plus a dockable window that lists all available Clips for quick and easy selection. Users can also define keyboard shortcuts and create buttons for quickly inserting special characters.

Another major new addition is the ability to quick edit an ebook’s Table of Contents without having to generate a new TOC. A number of new reports – including an all-encompassing All Files report – have also been added, while users can now play audio and video clips in Sigil, with the related functions for image handling updated to work with other media clips too.

Other minor changes include Sigil’s ability to now save invalidly constructed XML files, options for searching with wrap on or off, and separate stylesheets for the Index and TOC HTML files. Users can now also bookmark their location to return to later.

There’s one major behind-the-scenes change, with Sigil now using Qt 5 for its HTML rendering option. Two visible improvements brought about by this change are support for audio and video preview, plus the correct display of embedded fonts.

The update is rounded off with a promise of better performance and stability. Sigil 0.7.0 comes with visible performance improvements in a number of areas, including opening and changing tabs, merging of files and bulk renaming. It also promises to have fixed all bugs from previous releases, and no longer closes when attempting to open invalid EPUB files. The save routine implements more integrity checks, while splits and merges can be done without the risk of data loss.

Sigil 0.7.0 is a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Windows users can also download Sigil Portable 0.7.0 for running directly from a USB flash drive.

Photo Credit: SueC/Shutterstock

Vice President Joe Biden today recognized 18 public safety officers for exhibiting exceptional courage in a Medal of Valor ceremony at the White House. The Medal of Valor is the highest national award for valor by a public safety officer, and it is bestowed on those whose heroic actions were above and beyond the call of duty.

The Vice President, who was joined by Attorney General Eric Holder, highlighted the bravery of the men and women who were being honored, and paid tribute to the spouses of the recipients who had lost their lives in the line of duty. He also talked about the special qualities that are unique to those who put themselves in danger to save others:

My association with firefighters and police has been… the essence of my public life. And as many of these things that I do, I still grapple with what makes you do what you do? I’m just thankful that you do.

You can't explain it, but you know it when you see it. I see it in the shield over someone’s heart. I see it in the men and women who are sitting here before us today…Thank God for you. You’re from different backgrounds, but you’re the glue that literally binds communities together at times of stress. You’re that face that shows up for a woman on the second floor of a burning building just when she thinks it’s all over for her… The amazing thing about all of you is that the very things you do when you’re on duty to save people’s lives, you do when you're off duty. There’s no separation.

read more

We all have heard about Google Glass — for sometime now. There’s talk it’s coming (but not when) and that there are unique capabilities (but most details are under wraps). Google Glass is a bit of an enigma, and I have remained largely uninterested in the project. That changed this morning.

Google makes me want a product I had no idea I was even interested in — I am pretty sure that’s the intention. In fact, Google had me drooling in only two minutes and sixteen seconds — talk about a good sales pitch. And the video did not even require many words to accomplish its task.

The video Google posted this morning depicts the world as seen through Glass, and it is a glorious place. Simple commands beginning with “Glass” result in photos, videos and information appearing right before your eyes.

As an example, my son and I love to mountain bike. We race down single-track trails at top speed looking for the toughest obstacles, the biggest logs to hop and the best jumps. We always talk about getting a GoPro camera to capture these memories — or at least as evidence to next of kin about what transpired in our final moments.

That is, of course, a simple use for a product that will likely cost much more than a handlebar and helmet camera. But Glass will also provide much wider functionality. It will not be a product for a few extreme sports nuts, but sell to a wider audience. And, if Google supports this as the company does Android, then Glass will evolve even more than what you can get a glimpse of in this video.

The day is certainly drawing near — Google is taking beta testers, though it will cost you to become one. Of course, Glass could be the new Nexus Q, but I have hopes for more. Sign me up….please!

One of the big stories in the media-blogosphere last week was a brouhaha over blogger Maria Popova’s use of affiliate links on her Brain Pickings blog, something critics such as Felix Salmon of Reuters argued was in conflict with her stated goal of keeping the blog advertising free. The debate that emerged was a microcosm of the discussions that have been going on for some time now around self-published blogging stars like Andrew Sullivan — who has staked his future on a user-driven subscription model — and the benefits and risks of monetization models like affiliate links and sponsored content.

Popova’s presence at the center of these ongoing debates is one reason why we are delighted to announce that she will be joining us at our paidContent Live conference in New York on April 17 to talk about these and other topics. The Bulgarian-born curator will be appearing alongside Andrew Sullivan and financial blogger Andrew Ross Sorkin, who runs the DealBook site for the New York Times, and you can find out more information about the conference here.

Andrew Sullivan took the media world by surprise before 2013 was even a week old, when he announced that he was leaving The Daily Beast and launching his own site, and would be relying on monthly fees from readers to support him and the team behind his blog The Daily Dish. He raised more than $300,000 in just a couple of weeks, and some readers donated far more than he was asking — as much as $10,000 in one case — to become members of the site.

Readers vs. advertising revenue?

In a similar way, Popova has said she prefers to rely on readers for support, although she uses a donation system rather than a monthly subscription. Both Sullivan and the blogger/curator have said they would rather be supported directly by readers instead of subjecting those readers to annoying advertisements, and that commitment is one reason why Popova’s use of affiliate links triggered some controversy — although the blogger has said she sees them as a way for readers to support her as well (and she has since added disclosure about them to her site).

Meanwhile, the broader debate over how writers should be compensated, and the impact of new content models, continues unabated: Is going solo like Sullivan or Popova have done something that only a select few superstars can do, or is it theoretically possible for many? How does that change the relationship between writers like Sorkin or analytical mastermind Nate Silver and traditional publishers like the New York Times? What are some of the ways traditional media outlets — and/or the writers who work for them — can take advantage of this disruption?

These and other questions are going to be at the top of the agenda for paidContent Live in New York, where we also have a broad slate of other fascinating panels and fire-side interviews to offer. If you’d like to be part of the group Jay Rosen has called “the people formerly known as the audience,” you can register and buy tickets here.

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Join us live at the 2013 PlayStation Meeting where Sony will hopefully unveil what’s next for their iconic gaming console. The event runs from 6pm Eastern/3pm Pacific and I’ll be posting images and commentary in our liveblog below. You can also watch it live right here thanks to Ustream.

Google shared another one of its @Google Talks today. This one features George Saunders, the New York Times bestselling writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children’s books.

He appeared at Google to promote his collection of stories “Tenth of December”.

More recent @Google Talks here.

Gears of War has always had some excellent multiplayer. The introduction of Horde mode in Gears of War 2 introduced a cooperative angle that made the game that much sweeter. The latest game in the series – Gears of War: Judgment – will introduce new elements to multiplayer to hopefully make it even better.

The folks at People Can Fly, the developers behind Judgment, show off some of the new weapons that will populate the Team Deathmatch mode. The weapons seem to be some of the best the series has yet seen thanks to the super creative efforts from the team behind the original Painkiller and Bulletstorm.

Beyond Team Deathmatch, the game will also feature Free-For-All, Domination and Overrun. The usual XP bonuses and perks will be present as well.

Gears of War: Judgment takes players back into the past on March 19 exclusively for Xbox 360.

85 years of the Academy Awards in under 4 minutes. In preparation for Sunday’s Oscar broadcast, relive all of the Best Picture winners – from Wings to The Artist. It’s a fun ride filled with some great films (and some not-so-great-films). You can be the judge of what’s what.

[Nelson Carvajal via JoBlo]

Senior VP of Policy Dan Kish speaks with Special Report about opening vast federal lands to energy development which could produce $14.4 trillion in GDP over the next 37 years.

Last week, Mars rover Curiosity, after months of meticulous planning, finally used its hammering drill to collect a sample of Martian rock dust.

Today, NASA scientists have released images confirming that the first-ever sample of drilled rock dust is safely in one of Curiosity’s sample scoops.

“Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.”

In the coming days, the rock sample will be enclosed in Curiosity’s Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) instrument and sieved to remove particles larger than 150 microns (0.006 inches). Small portions of the sample will then be placed inside the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments to determine its mineral and chemical make-up.

The historic drilling took place on February 8, when the rover used its drill to bore a 6.4 centimeter (2.5-inch) hole into a rock named “John Klein.” Researchers hope the rock dust will provide information about Mars’ wet past, and possibly about whether life could have once existed on the red planet.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

I recently chatted with DuJour Magazine to talk about BlackBerry 10 and what makes this new BlackBerry so different from the legacy devices, as well as from the competition. Check out the article and see if you agree that “Return of the BlackBerry” is a nice editorial around the new company that is BlackBerry.

Read the full DuJour Magazine article “Return of the BlackBerry” available at this link.

Tesla released its fourth quarter and full year earnings for 2012 on Wednesday, and revealed that the company is expecting to generate its first quarterly profit — excluding non-cash options and warrant-related expenses — in the first quarter of 2013. So, yes, that’s on a non-GAAP basis, but it’s a pretty sizable achievement for the decade-old company.

Tesla also confirmed that it has hit its previously reported goal of producing its second electric car the Model S at a rate of 400 cars per week and 20,000 cars per year. This production rate is crucial because it will mean Tesla can get its Model S cars out to its line of thousands of customers in a timely manner and can book those revenues.

Tesla said for the fourth quarter of 2012, it made 2,750 Model S cars, and a total of 3,100 vehicles during the full year 2012. The company brought in 6,000 new reservations for the Model S in the fourth quarter, up from almost 2,900 in the third quarter of 2012. For the first quarter of 2013, Tesla says it will deliver 4,500 cars to customers. For comparison’s sake a smaller car brand like Volvo sells around a half million cars in a year.

Tesla brought in revenues of $306.33 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, up from $39.38 million for the fourth quarter in 2011. So yes, a massive jump due to its Model S sales. For the full year 2012, Tesla generated $413.26 million, up from $204.24 million for the full year in 2011.

For the fourth quarter of 2012, Tesla had a net loss of $89.93 million, or a loss of $0.79 per share for the fourth quarter, which was a bigger loss than its $81.49 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2011. But Tesla says it still expects to have a “slightly” positive net income for the first quarter of 2013 on a non-GAAP basis.

Tesla says it had cash flow of $221 million at the end of 2012, but had negative free cash flow for the fourth quarter of 2012, down from 40 percent from the previous quarter. So for JUST December, Tesla generated positive free cash flow, which must have been what CEO Elon Musk meant when he tweeted that the company had narrowly become cash flow positive. Usually companies say this about quarters, not individual months.

Tesla says it had an 8 percent gross margin for the fourth quarter of 2012 due to the higher Model S production rate. Tesla confirmed that it thinks it can meet its goal of gross margin of 25 percent by the end of the year. That 25 percent does not include regulatory credits, said Musk on the call.

Tesla now has 32 stores around the world that it’s opened to sell its cars in a hands-on type of way, not unlike Apple’s store experience. One of the leading designers of Apple’s store experience, George Blankenship, is actually heading up Tesla’s store experience. Tesla plans to open another 15 to 20 more stores in 2013. Tesla says it spent $46 million (on a GAAP basis) for the Q4, which much of that going toward store expansion.

In the next few months Tesla will market heavily in Asia and Europe and the company expects to see demand higher than 20,000 per year globally, said Musk on a Q&A call. Blankenship says they’re seeing a strong response in Europe even before they have Model S display cars in stores. The first Tesla store will be opened in China in the Spring in a shopping center in Beijing.

Tesla said it made its first payment of $12.7 million to the DOE for the loan it received, and will make its second payment in March 2013.

Overall 2012, and particularly the fourth quarter, was a breakthrough time for Tesla as it transitions to a profitable auto maker, and moves towards offering even more low-cost cars in the future. “That’s a pretty big deal,” said Musk, referring to the first profitable quarter.

Musk also said on the call that Tesla is considering leasing Model S cars in the U.S. in the second half of the year. But the lease deal must be compelling for customers and make banks feel comfortable, said Musk. In 2014, “leasing will be a big factor” in the U.S., and will be a moderate part of revenue in 2013 in Europe.

We’ll listen to the earnings call at 230 PST and update this with any crucial info. Tesla stock fell in after hours trading by almost 3 percent, perhaps on a larger than expected loss, but stocks just also had their biggest fall in 2013 after the Federal Reserve’s last meeting.

Updated between 2:30PM PST, and 3:15PM PST with updates from Tesla’s Q&A call.

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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• Cleantech third-quarter 2012

The Jared Company has announced that they’ve just launched a new weather app for BlackBerry 10 called WeatherTrax. The app has everything you’d expect from a well-built BlackBerry 10 weather app including a current weather active frame when it’s minimized.

WeatherTrax uses the Weather Online service that provides accurate worldwide weather data. Set your city or use the GPS to do it automatically. This app works anywhere in the world, Ideal for seasoned travellers.

Download WeatherTrax free for your BlackBerry 10 device.

A California couple who were having a romantic Valentine’s date in San Francisco got more than they bargained for when a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge turned up a windfall.

Carlos and Barbara Landeros said they found a camera bag unattended at Vista Point and, because the iconic spot was so crowded with tourists, decided to stand guard over it in the hopes that someone would come and claim it. After almost an hour, no one had come forward.

Barbara and her husband decided to look inside the bag and were astonished to find not only camera equipment, but a huge wad of cash and credit cards. The total amount of money inside was $11,060.

“I got nervous at first, it could be drug money,” Barbara said. “I was scared.”

Rather than keep the money for themselves, the couple turned the bag in to the police. The credit cards were traced to a Chinese man who was on a trip to California with some family, and it turned out the money belonged to different members. The man was ecstatic, to say the least, when he got the call about their property and sent the couple a reward for being honest. He was given the bag on his last day of the trip.

Barbara Landeros said she is a big believer in Karma and is glad they decided to do the right thing. Besides, she says, it would have haunted her had the owner not been found.

“So my heart is rested now because the people got their money and their bag,” she said.

Last year, Mozilla released an impressive tech demo called BananaBread that showed how HTML5 and WebGL can handle 3D rendering in a game. It was very basic, but it showed a lot of promise, especially in Web-based texture compression. Now one developer has released a new tech demo that blows prior experiments in WebGL 3D rendering out of the water.

Mozilla has the story of Anthony Liot, a developer for Actisku He took on the task of porting a 3D engine called Unigine to HTML5 using Mozilla’s Web technologies and Emscripten. The results are absolutely mind blowing. You can check out the non-interactive demo here. It works in either Firefox or Chrome.

If your browser, namely Internet Explorer, can’t display WebGL rendered 3D visuals, check out some screenshots below:

For more details on this project, check out Actisku’s blog post.

A quick, accurate and highly sensitive process to reliably detect minute traces of explosives on luggage, cargo or travelling passengers has been demonstrated by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The vapor detection technology accurately detects and identifies the vapors of even very low-volatility explosives in real time at ambient temperature and without sample pre-concentration. Details are outlined in a recent issue of Analytical Chemistry.

Rather than searching for particle residue using a typical method like surface swipes or using pulses of air to dislodge particles for analysis, the system ‘sniffs’ directly for explosives vapors, much the way bomb-sniffing canines do.

“We have demonstrated direct, real-time vapor detection for the low-volatility explosive compound RDX, which is used in many types of explosives,” said David Atkinson, senior research scientist at PNNL. Low-volatility compounds are those which release very small amounts of the explosive vapor typically at parts per trillion levels or lower, making it extremely difficult to detect. The PNNL system easily detects vapors from a fingerprint-sized sample of RDX at levels below 25 parts per quadrillion.

“The system correctly identified the RDX vapor using selective atmospheric pressure chemical ionization with mass spectrometry,” explained Atkinson. The approach involves pulling an air sample stream and ionizing it within a reaction region in an atmospheric flow tube. The ionized sample moves to a mass spectrometer for ion detection and identification. These air samples need no heating or pre-concentrating.  Analysis happens in about one second.

“The key part is ionization,” said Atkinson. “We tailored the chemistry to greatly enhance both ionization efficiency and selectivity, which results in the best possible detection.”

Only a limited number of ultra-sensitive detection methods have been found capable of detecting low-volatility explosive compounds at levels below parts-per-trillion. But these methods typically take much longer and require pre-concentration of the sample from the vapor phase.

Currently, most airport security agents use cloth-like material to swipe luggage and cargo to collect explosives particles for detection. The samples are then analyzed one at a time in a process that requires the swipe to be heated to a temperature needed to volatilize the particles for detection.

In some cases, airport security will turn to canines for detection, especially for large items where size such as vehicles or cargo make particle sampling impractical.

“What we are attempting to develop is an instrument that replicates or surpasses the capabilities of a dog,” said Atkinson. However, while canine olfactory systems are highly developed, dogs present issues that machines don’t. Man’s best friend only works limited hours, must be fed, exercised regularly and rested. While a dog’s ability to smell and detect explosives is extremely sensitive, instruments may soon surpass their capabilities and perform at a lower cost.

Robert Ewing, PNNL senior research scientist, sees a bright future for the technology and is hoping to push the performance even further.

“Currently we have demonstrated the detection of explosive compounds such as RDX, PETN, nitroglycerine and tetryl, along with plastic explosives that contain these materials at low parts per quadrillion levels,” said Ewing. “Future research will focus on detecting other explosive threats by manipulating the ionization chemistry and lowering detection limits.”

PNNL’s vapor detection technology is part of the lab’s Initiative for Explosives Detection, which has received financial support from the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at PNNL.

If you’re like most Americans, you’re probably familiar with the actors up for an Oscar this weekend, the athletes who competed in the Super Bowl or even (sadly) the latest stars of reality television.  But what about the scientists behind the flu shot keeping you healthy this winter? Or the people responsible for the pain medication you take for your backache?

If a group of Silicon Valley luminaries have their way, scientists working on some of the world’s most intractable diseases will be like superheroes for future generations.  On Wednesday, Apple Chairman Art Levinson, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe co-founder (and wife of Brin) Anne Wojcicki, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan and investor Yuri Milner announced a new Breakthrough Prize recognizing achievement in life sciences research. Administered through a new Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, the prize will be awarded to five individuals or teams annually but this year 11 inaugural recipients received $3 million each.

Speaking at a presentation event Wednesday at the University of California, San Francisco Wojcicki said that given her father’s position as a Stanford University physicist she grew up appreciating the work of scientists, but that society generally tends to overlook their contributions.

“To me it always seemed like it was a real tragedy -– we all go to the doctor, we’ve all taken Tylenol and Advil and some of us have been sicker and have had to take other medications,” she said.  “But do you ever think about who actually invented that? Does anyone know the names of those people?”

Zuckerberg emphasized that the while the prize was meant to recognize researchers at the top of their fields, it’s also intended to inspire future scientists.

“I think that our society needs more heroes who are scientists and researchers and engineers. You guys are doing all of the amazing work and the thing that we can do from the sidelines is build institutions that celebrate and reward and recognize all of the real work,” he said. “The things that we talk about in the media and the things the market rewards has a big influence on what the next generation of people growing up will choose to do and I think it’s really important that a lot of the smartest people go and choose to solve these problems and go into these lines of work.”

To ensure that the ones making the top contributions are the ones deciding who gets recognition, winners will help select future recipients of the prize. Also, anyone can nominate a candidate online and there are no age restrictions.

Here are the first 11 winners (language from the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation):

Cornelia I. Bargmann
Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and
Behavior at the Rockefeller University. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

For the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules.

David Botstein
Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the Anthony B. Evnin Professor of
Genomics at Princeton University.

For linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms.

Lewis C. Cantley
Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and Director of the Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical
College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

For the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism.

Hans Clevers
Professor of Molecular Genetics at Hubrecht Institute.

For describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and cancer.

Titia de Lange
Leon Hess Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics, and Director of the Anderson
Center for Cancer Research at the Rockefeller University.

For research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends and their role in genome
instability in cancer.

Napoleone Ferrara
Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Senior Deputy Director for Basic Sciences at Moores Cancer
Center at the University of California, San Diego.

For discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to therapies for cancer and eye diseases.

Eric S. Lander
President and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Professor of
Biology at MIT. Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

For the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their
application to medicine through the creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the
human genome.

Charles L. Sawyers
Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Howard
Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

For cancer genes and targeted therapy.

Bert Vogelstein
Director of the Ludwig Center and Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

For cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes.

Robert A. Weinberg
Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and Director of the MIT/Ludwig Center for
Molecular Oncology. Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

For characterization of human cancer genes.

Shinya Yamanaka
Director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University
Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco

For induced pluripotent stem cells.

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• How consumer media will change in 2013
• The state of cross-platform media measurement

Google has launched an update to the Google Drive app for Android.

The biggest new feature is support for streaming video files. You must be using Honeycomb or greater to access the feature, but the ability to stream video files you have saved to Drive makes the app a lot more useful in a new way.

Google has also added pinch to zoom support in the presentation viewer in the app.

The update also includes some performance improvements across the app, as well as some bug fixes and other unspecified improvements.

Reviews for the app are pouring in. One user suggests they no longer need to carry a USB drive. Another says Dropbox is still better, and notes that Box gives them 50 GB of free space. Google Drive (and Google+ Photos) give you 5 GB.

Hat tip to Phone Arena.