Source: www.incipio.com --- Saturday, August 03, 2013
Everything for your Google Nexus 7 in one kit. Price: $70.00 Special Price: $20.00 ...
Source: http://www.incipio.com/google-nexus-7-essentials-kit-3658.html
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HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka (AP) ? Scoreboard Sunday in the second Twenty20 match between Sri Lanka and South Africa at Mahinda Rajapaksa Stadium:
Henry Davids b Kulasekara 7
Quinton de Kock st Sangakkara b Senanayake 19
Faf du Plessis b Malinga 12
JP Duminy c Mathews b Senanayake 30
AB de Villiers run out 15
David Miller c Chandimal b Kulasekara 36
David Wiese not out 7
Wayne Parnell not out 10
Extras: (2lb, 7w) 9
TOTAL: (for six wickets) 145
Overs: 20.
Fall of wickets: 1-11, 2-44, 3-48, 4-86, 5-105, 6-132.
Did not bat: Morne Morkel, Imran Tahir, Lonwabo Tsotsobe
Bowling: Nuwan Kulasekara 4-0-22-2 (1w), Lasith Malinga 4-0-32-1 (1w), Sachithra Senanayake 4-0-18-2 (5w), Angelo Mathews 4-0-32-0, Ajantha Mendis 4-0-39-0.
Sri Lanka: Dinesh Chandimal (captain), Kusal Perera, Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Lahiru Thirimanne, Angelo Mathews, Thisara Perera, Sachithra Senananyake, Nuwan Kulasekara, Lasith Malinga, Ajantha Mendis.
Series: South Africa leads three-match series 1-0.
Toss: South Africa.
Umpires: Ranmore Martinesz and Ruchira Palliyaguruge, Sri Lanka.
TV umpire: Raveendra Wimalasiri, Sri Lanka. Match referee: Andy Pycroft, Zimbabwe.
News Topics: Cricket, Sports People, Places and Companies: Mahinda Rajapaksa, David Miller, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Southern Africa, Africa, South Asia, AsiaCopyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This article is published under the terms of the News Licensing Group, LLC. privacy policy, in addition to the terms of use and privacy policy for this website.
Source: http://www.neurope.eu/news/wire/sri-lanka-vs-south-africa-scoreboard
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As Senators headed home on Thursday afternoon, with House members ready to join them on Friday for a five week vacation, lawmakers in Congress are leaving Washington with precious few achievements to show the folks back home.
For some voters, that's just fine - they don't want Congress to do much; for others, the lack of action on major issues shows how screwed up things are in Washington, D.C.
It has been 19 years since the Congress finished its budget work by the end of the fiscal year (September 30). Neither the House nor the Senate will come close this year.
The House has passed four of the 12 budget bills.
The Senate has passed none of them.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Congress had sent only 23 bills to President Obama for his signature, the latest being a bill that rolls back a recent increase in student loan interest rates.
One thing I've talked about for years is how much less work is being done by both the House and Senate - and figures produced by one of my colleagues bears that out.
Lisa Desjardins of CNN went back through the last five years, and found that 2013 has had the least amount of Congressional activity.
For example, in 2009, the Senate met for 113 days before the August break - 24 more days than in 2013.
Think about that - basically the Senate worked five more weeks in 2009 up until this point of the year, than Senators did in 2013.
The difference in the House was 19 days - almost four full work weeks.
Seems pretty logical to me that if you aren't in Washington for work in Congress, you aren't going to get much done in the House or Senate.
The last time the Senate voted on a Friday was in March. ?
The House didn't schedule one five day work week on the floor for the entire year.
For the next five weeks, the Congress is out. Then lawmakers are back for two weeks, and then they take the next week off.
By then, it is September 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Before that date, the House and Senate must approve a temporary, stop-gap budget to keep the government running.
Or, we have a government shutdown.
Source: http://www.wsbradio.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2013/aug/01/congress-leaves-until-after-labor-day/
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HeraldSunTopStories/~3/g0rllhHCGA4/story-fni0d54w-1226691241294
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Azarenka won seven of 10 break points to defeat Radwanska on the hardcourts at La Costa Resort and Spa and move into her sixth semifinal appearance of the year.
She will face seven seed Ana Ivanovic moved into the semifinals, taking down Roberta Vinci 6-1, 6-7 (1-7), 6-2.
Earlier in the day, French journeywoman Virginie Razzano stunned third-seeded former Wimbledon champ Petra Kvitova 6-7 (6-8), 7-5, 7-6 (10-8) in a marathon 3- hour, 35-minute affair.
Razzano is no stranger to knocking off better-known talent. She also shocked Serena Williams in the opening round at last year's French Open.
Her semifinal opponent will be fifth-seeded Samantha Stosur, who bumped off two seed Agnieszka Radwanska 7-5, 2-6, 6-3 in a 2-hour, 31-minute match. Radwanska, who was the runner-up in Stanford last week, titled here two years ago and was the Carlsbad runner-up in 2010.
The 2013 Carlsbad titlist will claim $125,000.
? Copyright 2013
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Question: How do I get directions for a route with multiple stops in the new Google Maps?
Answer: The snazzy redesign that Google unveiled at its I/O developer conference in May, and is now inviting users to try, took away this feature.
I didn't realize it myself until I was trying to calculate mileage expenses on a drive with an intermediate stop ? and realized that the usual buttons to add a destination had vanished. Other Maps users have been equally puzzled.
You can't blame them: Google didn't mention this subtraction in its post about the new look, although it did spell out the removal of the Latitude location-sharing feature that many people never bothered to try.
It also has yet to revise its old instructions for requesting a multiple-stop itinerary. They include a sample link which yields the old maps interface, plus a small caption at the top explaining that you were switched back to the prior version because you requested a feature the new one doesn't support.
But using the search syntax shown on that page ("from:first place to:second place to:third place") didn't work to request new multidestination directions. If you've opted into Google's new maps site, your only workaround on the desktop is to go to the blue "Help & Feedback" button at its top-right corner and select "Return to classic Google Maps."
Or you can pick up your phone ? not to use Google's Android and iOS apps, but to use the mobile version of its website.
It seems almost inevitable that Google will restore this feature (a Google spokesman didn't want to comment on the record), but in the meantime this is a lesson about how not to introduce a new product. Sometimes a company has to drop a useful feature to get other things to ship on time ? but why let users discover its absence when it could have explained things upfront?
It may also be an opportunity for Google users to try other mapping sites.
For the past few years, Google's strongest competition has come from Microsoft. Its Bing Maps site matches many of Google's features (bicycling directions are a notable exception) and was first to introduce others, such as a bird's-eye view from a much lower altitude than the usual satellite imagery, and it still allows multiple-stop directions.
AOL's MapQuest does as well but looks much more cluttered. Yahoo Maps has a cleaner appearance but only does driving directions.
These competitors, however, have yet to match Google's vast "Ground Truth" effort to augment and expand its cartographical data. As one result, Microsoft only recently updated its database to reflect the permanent closure in January of a stretch of Interstate 395 in Washington, while Yahoo did not know about that as of Wednesday.
(Google misses things, too. Although its overhead view shows how Columbus Circle in front of Union Station has been straightened out, its map view shows the old, tangled alignment. Please remember to trust your eyeballs regardless of what mapping app you use, lest errant guidance drive you to do something embarrassingly stupid like, say, driving a mile up a bike trail.)
Tip: Gmail's offline mode lets you read without bandwidth ? or ads
If you use Google's Chrome browser, you can install an app for its Gmail service ? open a new tab, click "Web Store" at the bottom right corner and search for "Gmail Offline" ? that lets you read and respond to your messages without an Internet connection.
That's a huge upgrade by itself, putting Google's Webmail service on a par with separate programs like Apple's Mail or Microsoft's Outlook in allowing you to catch up on old messages while offline. (Google Docs got a similar upgrade last summer, which I used to write part of this column on a Wi-Fi-free flight.) But Gmail's offline interface also strips out the already-fairly-unobtrusive ads that Google normally displays at the top of your inbox.
Give it a try. Then take a moment to think about how much you might pay to have those ads scrubbed from the regular Gmail interface, if Google allowed that choice.
?
Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.
Source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-TechTopStories/~3/Ut_Fl33OXmo/
Aug 3, 2013 8:50pm
The Obama administration has decided to allow Apple to keep importing older versions of the iPhone and iPad, reversing a decision by the International Trade Commission banning the imports.
The decision by the ITC in June banning Apple from importing the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 for U.S. sale, because Apple had violated Samsung patents on wireless technology was a major setback for the company.
But that was subject to review from the White House, and one day before an Aug. 4 deadline, President Obama?s trade representative invalidated the ban and granted Apple a reprieve.
Citing public interest, and fears that patent-holders could gain ?undue leverage? when competitors want to use or license their technologies, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman wrote that Apple can keep importing the older iPads and iPhones. It was the first time since 1987 that an administration had overturned a product ban like this one.
The commission should ?examine thoroughly and carefully on its own initiative the public interest issues,? Froman wrote.
Samsung can, however, take Apple to court, Froman wrote.
The ruling was a victory for Apple in its ongoing battle with Samsung over patent infringement.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The 162,000 jobs the economy added in July were a disappointment. The quality of the jobs was even worse.
A disproportionate number of the added jobs were part-time or low-paying ? or both.
Part-time work accounted for more than 65 percent of the positions employers added in July. Low-paying retailers, restaurants and bars supplied more than half July's job gain.
"You're getting jobs added, but they might not be the best-quality job," says John Canally, an economist with LPL Financial in Boston.
So far this year, low-paying industries have provided 61 percent of the nation's job growth, even though these industries represent just 39 percent of overall U.S. jobs, according to Labor Department numbers analyzed by Moody's Analytics. Mid-paying industries have contributed just 22 percent of this year's job gain.
"The jobs that are being created are not generating much income," Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA, wrote in a note to clients.
That's one reason Americans' pay hasn't kept up with even historically low inflation since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. Average hourly pay fell 2 cents in July to $23.98 an hour.
Among those feeling the squeeze is Elizabeth Wilkinson, 28, of Houston. After losing a $39,000-a-year administrative job at Rice University in January, Wilkinson found work at an employment agency for $15 an hour. Yet she's had to supplement that job with part-time work as a waitress.
"This morning I put $1.35 worth of gas in my car because that is all the money that I had," Wilkinson said via email. "It's very difficult to survive on $30,000 (a year), and I am living paycheck to paycheck."
Part-time work has made up 77 percent of the job growth so far this year. The government defines part-time work as being less than 35 hours a week.
Analysts say some employers are offering part-time over full-time work to sidestep the new health care law's rule that they provide medical coverage for permanent workers. (The Obama administration has delayed that provision for a year.)
Weak economies overseas have also reduced demand for U.S. goods and, as a result, for better-paying U.S. jobs in manufacturing. Government spending cuts have taken a toll on some middle-class jobs, too.
Many employers have also discovered that they can use technology to do tasks more cheaply and efficiently than office workers used to do. And some have found that they can shift middle-class jobs to low-wage countries such as China.
By contrast, most lower-paying jobs ? from waiters and hotel maids to store clerks, bartenders and home health care aides ? can't be automated or shipped abroad.
"You're always going to have jobs in the retail sector," says Michael Evangelist, a policy analyst with the liberal National Employment Law Project, which advocates on behalf of low-wage workers.
Consider Mike Ulrich, 30, who earned a master's degree in public administration in May from the University of Colorado. Ulrich hasn't been able to find work that requires a college degree. Instead, he works at a hardware store in Spokane, Wash., earning the state's minimum wage: $9.19 an hour.
Not all July's new jobs were low-paying. Local schools hired more than 10,000 teachers and other employees. Financial firms added 15,000.
And Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, thinks concerns about the surge in part-time work might be overblown. The government's figures on part-time jobs are highly volatile, Anderson notes. The big gain this year could quickly reverse, he says.
Yet for the most part, Daniel Alpert, managing partner of Westwood Capital, wrote in a report last month, "the only folks engaging in meaningful hiring are doing so because labor is cheap."
The low quality of the added jobs could help explain something that has puzzled economists: How has the U.S. economy managed to add an average of roughly 200,000 jobs a month this year even though it grew at a tepid annual rate below 2 percent in the first half of the year?
Some are proposing an answer: Perhaps a chronically slow-growth economy can't generate many good-paying jobs ? but can produce lots of part-time or lower-wage retail and restaurant work.
Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, recalls that the robust economic growth of the late '90s generated millions of middle-class jobs. And it pushed unemployment so low that short-staffed companies were forced to convert part-time jobs into full-time ones.
"Faster growth would fix things," Swonk says. "That's the magic fairy dust."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jobs-disproportionately-low-pay-part-time-162103614.html
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Raspberry Pi has unsurprisingly been a smash hit with the maker community. But here's an enterprise startup that is using the $35/$25 microcomputer -- or rather hundreds of them at a time -- as a network monitoring tool for corporate networks that bypasses the need for humans to report network outages to a help-desk.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7Nt3OnE_KbY/
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SHANGHAI (AP) ? A topping out ceremony was held Saturday for China's tallest building in the financial hub of Shanghai.
At 632 meters (2,073 feet), the Shanghai Tower in the city's Pudong district is the world's second-tallest building, surpassed only by Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which soars 829.8 meters (2,722 feet).
Topping out means the final beam has been placed at the top of the building. Once completed next year, the Shanghai Tower will have retail and office space, and a luxury hotel. It was designed by the U.S. architectural firm Gensler.
China's booming economy has fuelled a building frenzy, including some of the world's tallest buildings. The Shanghai Tower replaces the Shanghai World Financial Center ? completed in 2007 ? as the country's highest building.
The Shanghai Tower is the last piece in a group of super-tall skyscrapers in Shanghai's Pudong, which includes the Shanghai World Financial Center and Jin Mao Tower, both among the tallest in the world.
And in the south-central city of Changsha, developers are in the midst of building Sky City, an 838-meter (2,749-foot) structure that would overtake Burj Khalifa.
This summer, China also unveiled the world's largest building in terms of floor space in the western city of Chengdu. The New Century Global Center edged out the previous record-holder, the Dubai airport.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-tallest-building-nears-finish-shanghai-053442291.html
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Florida job cuts decreased in July.
Florida ranked fourth in job cuts in the South in July, but still has the highest amount of layoffs this year, according to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Employers in the Sunshine State announced 785 cuts in July, down from 2,260 cuts in June. A total of 13,651 layoffs have been announced in the state this year. Tennessee, South Carolina and Louisiana had higher amounts of job cuts last month, according to the data.
The job cut figures are based on public layoff announcements, such as Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices filed with the state of Florida.
In July, planned layoffs in South Florida included 74 jobs at The National Hotel in Miami Beach. The hotel was closed after it failed a safety inspection from the city. The hotel was required to send its workers home until it could pass the inspection.
Nationwide, planned job cuts declined slightly in July, as employers announced workforce reductions totaling 37,701 during the month, down 4.2 percent from 39,372 planned layoffs in June. While the job cuts were declining last month, the pacing was still 2.3 percent higher than a year ago, when 36,855 planned job cuts were recorded.
Employers have now announced 296,633 job cuts since January 1, which is 7.3 percent fewer than the 319,946 job cuts announced in the first seven months of 2012. At the current pace of downsizing, which is averaging 42,376 job cuts per month, 2013 will come in below the 2012 year-end total of 523,362, which was the lowest annual total since 1997 (434,350).
July workforce reductions were led by the health care sector, which announced 6,843 planned job cuts. That represents the highest number of cuts for this sector since 9,558 health care job cuts were recorded in November 2009. Health care organizations have now cut 29,794 jobs this year, 59 percent more than the 18,770 planned job cuts announced by this point in 2012.
Shaun Bevan covers tourism, hospitality, retail and restaurants.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vertical_32/~3/W8bpdV-ESiE/florida-still-has-highest-amount-of.html
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10 hours ago
Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images
Someday...this could be a booze-mobile. A U.S. Postal service employee leaves the loading dock to deliver mail from the Los Feliz Post Office on February 6, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
Special delivery from the post office ? beer, wine and spirits, if Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has his way.?
In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe said Thursday delivery of alcoholic beverages is on his wish list as the agency considers ways to raise revenue and save money after losing $16 billion last year. He also said he endorses ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as a way to help stabilize the service's finances.?
Donahoe said delivering alcohol has the potential to raise as much as $50 million a year. He mentioned how customers might want to, for example, mail bottles of wine home when they tour vineyards. Donahoe said his agency has looked at the possibility of using special boxes that would hold two, four or six bottles and ship for a flat-rate anywhere in the country.?
"There's a lot of money to be made in shipping beer, wine and spirits," Donahoe said. "We'd like to be in that business."?
The Postal Service says mailing alcoholic beverages is currently restricted by law. Customers are even told to cover any logos or labels if they use alcoholic beverage boxes for shipments.?
The agency is also urging changes in how it delivers the mail. A House committee has passed legislation to stabilize the Postal Service's ailing finances that would cut letter deliveries to five days and phase out door-to-door deliveries over 10 years. The bill does not include a provision to allow the agency to deliver alcohol.?
The Senate passed a postal reform bill last year that included a provision allowing the agency to deliver alcohol. The bill would require that such shipments would have to comply with any state laws where the shipment originated and was delivered. The measure also said the recipient would have to be at least 21 years old and would need to provide valid, government-issued photo identification upon delivery.?
The agency faces $15 billion in losses this year and is working toward restructuring its retail, delivery and mail processing operations.?
"We don't want to take any more debt on," Donahoe said. "We want to be able to get profitable, pay it down, just like any other business would, so that you stay strong for the future."?
The service's losses are largely due to a decline in mail volume and a congressional requirement that it make advance payments to cover expected health care costs for future retirees. About $11.1 billion of last year's losses were due to the health care payments.?
Donahoe said over the last decade, the mail volume at his agency's trademark blue boxes has dropped 60 percent.?
"That's our most profitable mail," he said. "That will continue to drop off because people pay bills online. And we understand that, it's easy, it's free, and so we have to continue to make changes."?
On a bright note, Donahoe said the volume of packages the service handles has grown considerably in recent years, a trend he expects to continue.?
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently approved a plan for the service to gradually shift from door delivery to cluster box and curbside delivery, which includes mailboxes at the end of driveways. The agency has been moving toward curbside and cluster box delivery in new residential developments since the 1970s.?
About 1 in 3 mail customers has door-to-door delivery. Some lawmakers have complained that ending home delivery in many densely developed urban areas would be difficult and pose hardships for many people, including the elderly and places where the weather can be harsh.?
"We'd work with the communities," Donahoe said, adding there would be special hardship exemptions for those physically unable to get their mail at centralized locations. "We want to figure out how to do it so people don't get mad."?
Donahoe said there are ways to install centralized mail boxes that fit in well with the neighborhood and also don't cause a lot of hardship for customers.?
Some 30 million residential addresses receive delivery to boxes at the door or a mail slot. Another 87 million residential addresses receive curbside or cluster box delivery.?
Door-to-door delivery costs the agency about $350 per year, on average. Curbside delivery costs average $224 per year for each address, while cluster box delivery averages $160.?
The service earlier this year backpedaled on its plan to end Saturday mail delivery after running into opposition in Congress. It has tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully over the past several years to persuade Congress to approve ending Saturday mail delivery.?
The National Association of Letter Carriers has said ending Saturday delivery would in particular hurt rural residents and the elderly who depend more heavily on the mail for prescription drugs and other goods. Donahoe said there would be a six-month implementation period to help smooth out any problems and that medicines would still be delivered on Saturdays.?
The Senate last year passed a bill that would have stopped the Postal Service from eliminating Saturday service for at least two years and required it to try two years of cost-cutting instead. The House didn't pass a bill.?
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It's been a pretty good year for Memphis (but I bet you knew that already). Just to recap, I've pulled together a list of some of the positive press that Memphis has gotten in the past seven months:
- The Score praised the FedExForum for having the best in-game music in the NBA.
- Spencer Hall wrote one of the greatest articles I've ever read about Memphis for SB Nation. He gets us more that we get us.
- Kiplinger declared Memphis one of the 10 Cheapest Cities to Live In.
- Travel + Leisure ranked us as one of the best U.S. Cities for Affordable Getaways.
- The New York Times Hominy sloved Hog and o much that they wrote a massive feature review.
- Speaking of Hog and Hominy, its head chefs, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman, were nominated for Food and Wine's Best New Chef.
- They also appreciate that you can do Memphis on the cheap.
- MSN named Memphis one of the Top 20 Travel Destinations for 2013.
- BuzzFeed thinks we're quite hospitable.
- Both Le Bonheur and St. Jude were recognized by the U.S. News and World Report.
- Grantland wrote a ton of wonderful things about the Grizzlies, but their season recap is one of my favorites.
- Adam Richmans' Fandemonium came to the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.?
- Forbes praised our emerging downtown.
- The U.S. News and World Report bowed down to our barbecue and declared Memphis the Best Barbecue City in America.
- Lastly, National Geographic Travel listed Memphis on its list of the Top 20 Places to Visit in the World.
Source: http://ilovememphisblog.com/2013/08/they-like-us-they-really-like-us/
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Microbiologists are trying to work out whether the agricultural use of antibiotics is fueling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria
Pigs carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus were found on US farms for the first time in 2007. Image: DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG/GETTY
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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The sight of just one boot coming through the doorway cues the clatter of tiny hoofs as 500 piglets scramble away from Mike Male. ?That's the sound of healthy pigs,? shouts Male, a veterinarian who has been working on pig farms for more than 30 years. On a hot June afternoon, he walks down the central aisle of a nursery in eastern Iowa, scoops up a piglet and dangles her by her hind legs. A newborn piglet's navel is an easy entry point for bacterial infections, he explains. If this pig were infected, she would have an abscess, a lump of inflamed tissue, just below the navel. ?In human terms, she'd be an outie instead of an innie,? he says, rubbing the pig's healthy, pink belly button.
Nearly six years ago, an outbreak of 'outies' at this nursery marked the first known infection with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in pigs in the United States. MRSA has troubled hospitals around the world for more than four decades and has been infecting people outside of health-care settings since at least 1995 (see Nature 482, 23?25; 2012). It causes around 94,000 infections and 18,000 deaths annually in the United States. In the European Union, more than 150,000 people are estimated to contract MRSA each year. Its first appearance on a US farm signalled the expansion of what many believe is a dangerous source of human infection.
Male investigated the infections with Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who has since launched one of the most comprehensive investigations yet of where MRSA lives and how it spreads into and out of agricultural settings. She has surveyed farms and grocery stores as well as people's homes, noses and pets. Her findings could help to end a raging debate about whether farms' use of antibiotics is contributing to the rise of drug-resistant bacterial infections in humans.
Scientists and health experts fear that it is, and that drug-resistant bacteria from farms are escaping via farmworkers or meat. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended more restraint in the use of antibiotics in livestock, following the lead of regulatory authorities in other countries (see Nature 481, 125; 2012).
But the meat and agricultural industries are fighting those restrictions. They claim that MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria that cause human infections arise in hospitals, and that meat production includes safety measures, such as sanitation rules in slaughterhouses, that prevent resistant bacteria from spreading to and infecting people. ?There's a long way between the farm and the table,? says Ron Phillips, a representative for the Animal Health Institute, a trade organization based in Washington DC that represents veterinary-medicine companies.
The major problem has been lack of data. Many farmers are reluctant to allow scientists access to their facilities, and farmworkers ? many of whom, in the United States, are undocumented immigrants ? are wary of anyone who might want to sample them. But Smith and a small group of researchers are starting to fill the void. They have ?really shaped the state of knowledge in the United States?, says Christopher Heaney, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Smith's current research, says Heaney, could allow officials to ?truly say where these bacteria in people's noses are coming from?.
Profit and loss
At a concentrated animal-feeding operation (CAFO) about an hour's drive west from Ames, Iowa, the usual din of the nursery is punctuated by the sound of piglets sneezing, thanks to an outbreak of H1N2 influenza. Craig Rowles, a veterinarian and the farm's manager, surveys his charges, some of which have mucus dripping from their snouts. ?It's just like when you bring kids to a day-care centre,? he says. ?After a while, they're going to come home with a snotty nose.?
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/biology/~3/gFFStzl3gl0/article.cfm
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By Cezary Podkul
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When the Reverend Seamus Finn got an email from Goldman Sachs last week, the giant Wall Street bank was addressing an issue that was already on his mind.
"We were getting ready to go back to them and talk to them about commodities anyway," said Finn, who heads up faith-consistent investing for the Missionary Oblates, a Washington DC-based Catholic group that owns Goldman shares.
Driven by a determination to invest in a socially conscious way, Finn's group has been concerned about banks' commodities activities since 2008, when a spike in energy and agricultural products caused food riots in Africa. The issue is whether banks' trading activities artificially drive up food prices.
The pre-emptive message from Goldman, sent ahead of last week's Senate hearing on banks' commodity activities, asserted that the firm's investments in physical assets such as aluminum warehouses do not drive up prices. But it left unanswered many of Finn's questions about what the bank is doing in the sector.
(Goldman moved on Wednesday to address criticism of its Metro International metals business, announcing it would offer customers immediate access to stored aluminum.
The statement sent to Finn and later released widely did not address one of his broader concerns: that no one outside the banks themselves knows for sure how big their commodity trading arms are, how much they trade, or how much money they make.
"We would like more disclosure on that," Finn said.
He is unlikely to get his wish. While the country's largest banks are required to disclose their activities in some consumer-facing businesses such as mortgages, there is no similar requirement for them to do so on the commodities side.
Commodity "revenue" figures reported to securities and banking regulators can differ wildly - and may not provide an accurate reflection of the size of the business.
Most banks report some numbers, but one of the biggest - Morgan Stanley - hasn't put a dollar figure on its commodities revenues in more than a decade, reporting only the year-on-year percentage change in its securities filings. None provide cost, salary or bonus figures, making it impossible to guess at relative profitability.
"I don't think you have any banks that are properly disclosing commodities revenue," said George Kuznetsov, head of research and analytics at Coalition, a British consulting firm that employs more than 100 researchers to scrutinize public disclosures and conduct interviews to estimate trading revenues for investment banks.
The issue is becoming increasingly important as politicians press the banks for more insight into the risks they are taking by owning metals warehouses or chartering oil tankers, and as some seek buyers for their physical commodities holdings. On Friday, JPMorgan said it was selling out.
"Their physical commodities activities are not comprehensively or understandably reported...they're often buried in arcane regulatory filings," Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat for Ohio, said at last week's hearing.
AS INSTRUCTED
The lack of clarity over trading operations has long been a vexing issue across other desks as well, such as foreign exchange and equities. But the current debate over whether banks should be allowed to continue trading so actively in raw material markets has only sharpened focus on this area.
In sum, it's big money: the top ten global banks collectively made about $6 billion trading commodities last year, down 24 percent from in 2011, according to Coalition.
The banks say that they are providing regulators and investors with all the information they are required to give.
"Our disclosures are in line with all relevant reporting requirements and provide investors with all material information," said a spokesman for Morgan Stanley. He said the bank provides data on the main drivers of results across its three core business lines but does not break down earnings to a "product" level like commodities.
Critics say the disclosures still leave much to be desired.
"They really don't tell us much," said Robert McCullough, an energy economist who spent six years litigating an electricity market manipulation case against Morgan Stanley.
"If you wanted an estimate of what their position was in electricity in 2001, six years of litigation was not sufficient to get it," he said.
In terms of financial system risks, the Federal Reserve, which regulates banks, has the power to make on-staff visits and request data sets from the banks on their commodities activities. The agency also keeps on-site staff at the banks who are dedicated to monitoring commodities.
But that is not enough, according to some former examiners.
"There's a sophistication gap between the regulator and the bank that they regulate," said Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner and energy executive who now teaches finance at Boston University.
"The commodities are where the more sophisticated transactions take place," he said.
Y-9C? BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO
One bank filing collected by the Fed is called "FR Y-9C." The detailed questionnaire requires banks to tell the Federal Reserve everything from how much money they spend on postage to how much money they make trading commodities.
But because regulatory accounting rules may vary from the way banks report their earnings to investors, the Fed's questionnaire can often bear little resemblance to banks' Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Goldman Sachs, for instance, reported only $100 million in "commodity and other" trading revenues to the Fed in 2012. In a separate filing with the SEC, the bank said it made $575 million trading commodities. Industry sources actually pegged Goldman's commodity revenues closer to $1.25 billion for the year.
Asked about the different figures, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs said: "We disclose figures in the way we are required. That may not correspond to the way we actually measure the performance of certain trading businesses." He declined to provide a figure for the bank's commodity trading revenues.
JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup Inc provide similar commodity trading figures to the Fed and the SEC. But like Goldman, both banks warn investors in their SEC filings that the figures don't fully represent their performance because they exclude earnings on interest, an "integral" part of trading revenue.
JPMorgan reported nearly $2.4 billion in commodities trading revenues for 2012, which on paper was more than Goldman and Morgan Stanley combined. But several analysts say actual revenues are likely closer to this year's $1.5 billion target.
Spokesmen for JPMorgan and Citi declined comment.
With so much uncertainty around the headline numbers, attempting to separate banks' paper bets on commodities from physical trading - the segment most at risk from regulators - is all but impossible. Analysts at Deutsche Bank estimated in a report last week that JPMorgan's physical book accounted for somewhere between a third and two-thirds of its overall commodities trading operation.
Some other banks have taken the view that their commodity businesses are too small to merit much attention.
At Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank, commodities revenues may show up in an occasional earnings transcript or investor presentation, but neither bank discloses in filings how much money it makes trading in the sector. In its 2012 annual report, Deutsche Bank simply notes commodities "revenues were lower" compared to 2011. Barclays makes no mention of the segment's performance in its annual report.
Spokespeople for Deutsche and Barclays declined to comment.
ANALYSTS VS. NUNS
The lack of detail on banks' commodity trading revenues does not seem to worry some on Wall Street. It's just one part of a mosaic of items analysts look at in evaluating the firms.
"It's just not been a significant issue for me," said David Hilder, who covers banks for brokerage Drexel Hamilton.
And some experts say even the limited disclosure by banks is better than the alternative. Many of the big global commodity traders, such as Vitol and Trafigura, are privately held and therefore subject to no disclosure at all.
"The (trading) activity will not go away," said Randall Guynn, a banking lawyer at Davis Polk, who testified at last week's hearing. "You're better off having it in regulated companies where there is some disclosure."
That hasn't stopped some influential groups from calling on banks to step up their reporting.
Last year, the CFA Institute - which confers the Chartered Financial Analyst credential to investment professionals worldwide - endorsed a report calling for banks to improve their risk disclosures to investors. Banks' trading books, in particular, remain "very opaque" to investors, said Vincent Papa, the institute's director of financial reporting policy.
"In many cases, they give you a figure which they deem to be meaningless from an internal management standpoint," Papa said. "They just give it for compliance reasons. That's not beneficial to investors. It's about giving relevant information, rather than just ticking the boxes."
For some of the banks' investors, commodity trading data is very relevant indeed. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) represents $100 billion worth of institutional investors like Finn, the DC reverend. The group openly calls for corporations to avoid speculating on food commodities.
But with disclosures being so lacking, ICCR members like Sister Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia have little idea whether their investments in big banks like Goldman Sachs comply with this philosophy.
"I would absolutely hope that they would disclose what is happening to those of us who are shareholders," Nash said.
(Additional reporting by Douwe Miedema in Washington D.C.; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-nuns-analysts-alike-bank-commodity-earnings-mystery-050444040.html
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When Apple released Logic Pro X as a new, $200 app a couple of weeks ago, I immediately thought that it might finally answer the question of where Apple stood on the issue of upgrade pricing. Instead of adding a mechanism to the App Store to allow existing users to upgrade at a discount, Apple, like Tweetie 2 back in 2009, simply released the new version as a separate app and asked anyone and everyone, new and existing customers alike, to pay in full, and for some, to pay again in full.
Only it wasn't really "in full". Logic Pro X on the App Store, like Logic Pro 9 before it, was substantially cheaper than the full retail version of Logic Pro that used to come in a box. Likewise, when Final Cut Pro X first his the App Store, it's $200 price tag was far, far cheaper than the $1200+ full retail price tag of the Final Cut Pro version that preceded it.
Indeed, the price Apple was asking for both Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro, and other pro apps like Aperture on the App Store, was far closer to their previous upgrade pricing than anything they ever asked at retail. In other words, if you bought Logic Pro 9 on the App Store and then bought Logic Pro 10 again (like I did), you essential paid the equivalent of what was previously an upgrade-level price for the new version.
So, it's not that Apple has failed to create a mechanism for upgrade pricing on the App Store at all - it's that they've succeeded in obliterating full retail pricing. Everything is now upgrade-level pricing, all the time, for everyone. No upgrade sales, just "everyday low prices" for all.
That might take first-time buyer profit out of developers pockets, and irk existing customers who don't think new customers deserve the same "deal", but it also simplifies the process on the store side and lowers the barrier to entry for those new customers.
There are a ton of arguments many have already made about the continued devaluation of software on the App Store in general, so I won't recapitulate them here, but it very well could be that part of the devaluation, or commoditization - or the mainstreaming of software, if you prefer - isn't that upgrade pricing hasn't been implemented for existing customers, but that it's become the new normal pricing for everyone.
That might be annoying for those of us who grew up in a time before iOS, when upgrade pricing was commonplace. I'm not sure it'll even be a consideration for those growing up now on iOS. It'll just be the way things are.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/wMavZdSiJp8/story01.htm
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