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The Albuquerque Convention Center is awash in debt and has no money to make major improvements to the facility, a part of which is four decades old.
The Albuquerque Convention Center? ?Albuquerque Convention CenterLatest from The Business JournalsAlbuquerque Convention Center redesign revealedPhotos: ABQ Comic ExpoVeteran?s Business Expo moved because of fire Follow this company is awash in debt and has no money to make major improvements to the facility, a part of which is four decades old.
Without the ability to make improvements to the convention center?s west portion, which was built in 1972, or the east side, which was built in 1991, Albuquerque could see its role as a convention destination greatly diminished, said city and tourism leaders.
The U.S. convention center industry is overbuilt and older facilities like Albuquerque?s are finding it more difficult to compete even for regional conventions, industry and city officials said.
The convention center ...
Covers: Banking/finance, health care, government, economic development, water, insurance
The Union Minister for Shipping, Shri G.K. Vasan handing over the cheque for Rs.50.50 crore to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) towards equity share contribution for the road connectivity project between Chennai and Ennore Ports, the cheque received by the GM, NHAI, Shri S.R. Tholia, in Chennai on June 29, 2012.
The Chairman, Chennai Port Trust, Shri Atulya Misra is also seen.
If you wake up to find the Splashtop Streamer widget on your PC or Mac begging to be updated, then it's probably worth it -- especially if you have a new iPad lying around. Splashtop 2 has been optimized to work with the Retina display, which makes it a cinch to squeeze your entire Windows or OS X desktop onto the 10-inch screen without it looking terrible. The system has also been redesigned to avoid the need to enter IP addresses, port numbers or Google account details. Instead, you'll create a new Splashtop 2 login that should work once across all your devices. Lastly, the UI seems a lot friendlier, there's a new in-app purchase to "supercharge" network performance, and there's also improved support for fluid video streaming at up to 30fps. (Alas, there's still no fullscreen support for Windows Media Center users though.) The new streamer and iPad app are available now, while the Android update should arrive soon. Want to see it in action? Head past the break for the promo video.
Come mid-July, consumers will be able to buy the $200 gadget that runs on the powerful new operating system Jelly Bean, raising the bar for Android slabs
Google finally opened the curtains to reveal its shiny new tablet, the Asus Nexus 7, at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco. The 7-inch device is the search giant's maiden entry into the tablet hardware space, which is currently dominated by Apple's iPad and littered with third-party devices running slightly tweaked versions of Android software. How does the Nexus 7 measure up? Here, four key takeaways:
1. Google's going after the Kindle Fire Google plans to sell the Nexus 7 starting at $199 for an 8 GB version (or $249 for 16 GB), putting it in direct competition with Amazon's similarly sized budget-version $199 Kindle Fire ? not Apple's $499 iPad. The Nexus 7, which is built by Asus under Google's supervision, will run the newest version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean, and comes with a 1280 x 800 back-lit display, an Nvidia quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and 1 GB of of RAM. When you look at the other available products in the same price range ? Amazon's Kindle Fire, Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 ? "everything else basically looks like crap," says JR Raphael at Computerworld. But "this thing provides a first-class tablet experience at a budget level price."?
SEE MORE: Google's new 3D maps: 4 talking points
2. The Nexus 7's quality is readily apparent "The tablet looks and feels sturdy," says Sara Yin at PC Mag. Its lighter and more powerful than the Fire, and its "rounded, tapered edges" with a rubber matte backing give it a distinctly "sporty" feel. A Google UI designer says Jelly Bean was designed with a 7-inch display in mind, and the difference is noticeable: "The tablet performs pretty flawlessly and scrolling is buttery smooth."?
3. The tablet takes advantage of Google's strengths I think the OS improvements are merely incremental, says Dan Gillmor at the Guardian, "but they are impressive and keep Google at least [on par] with Apple's iOS in most ways, and ahead in a few." What really makes this particular Android device "truly compelling" is the resources of Google itself: Search, maps, and more, which are all a close approximation of their more robust desktop versions. Jelly Bean's ability to do so underscores why these Nexus devices are so important: They give users "the absolute latest operating systems on excellent hardware ? and Google, not a carrier, keeps them updated."
SEE MORE: Google's 'polished' new Chromebooks: 4 key improvements
4. It's going international Believe it or not, $199 isn't the Nexus 7's most important price point, says Vlad Savov at The Verge: It's ?159. The Nexus 7 will go on sale in? the U.K. (and Australia and Canada) ? places where it's been difficult for Amazon to eke out content deals for things like Netflix movies (which were only recently added) or U.S.-only services like Turntable.fm, which severely limits the Kindle Fire's appeal abroad. "In beating Amazon to a broader international rollout with its media tablet, Google is laying an essentially uncontested claim to three important English-speaking markets." That's the Nexus 7's real trump card.
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And like that, Google is officially in the tablet hardware business. Google is mere minutes away from kicking off its yearly I/O conference and perhaps the biggest news of the show, the announcement of the Nexus 7, was spoiled by the Google Play Store. Here is the Google/Asus Nexus 7 in all it's glory.
Using NASA's Huble Space Telescope, astronomers have detected a huge cluster of galaxies some?10 billion light-years away. The cluster is so massive that it?distorts light that passes near it.?
By SPACE.com Staff,?SPACE.com / June 26, 2012
A diagram (not to scale) of how gravitational lensing works.
NASA, ESA & L. Cal?ada
Enlarge
The most massive faraway cluster of galaxies has been found, thanks to a fortuitous astrophysical alignment that helped astronomers detect the mammoth grouping.
The galaxy cluster, named IDCS J1426.5+3508, is located a staggering 10 billion light-years away from Earth, and researchers spotted the behemoth because its gravitational field is so strong that it is warping the light coming from a galaxy behind it. Galaxy clusters are the most massive structures in our universe, and are made up of hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity.
"When I first saw it, I kept staring at it, thinking it would go away," study lead author Anthony Gonzalez, an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said in a statement. "The galaxy behind the cluster is a typical run-of-the-mill galaxy with a lot of young stars, but the galaxy cluster in front of it is a whopper for that range. However, it's really the way that the two systems are lined up that makes the occurrence truly remarkable."
This fluke alignment created what's called a gravitational lens, which occurs when a massive object, such as a black hole or galaxy cluster, lies directly between an observer (or telescope), and a more distant target in the background.
The powerful gravitational force of the object in the foreground warps the light being emitted by the more distant target, bending and twisting it on its path to the telescope.
Gravitational lensing from the faraway galaxy has never been observed behind a cluster at such an enormous distance, the researchers said.
Since this galaxy cluster is so distant ? 10 billion light-years away ? it existed when the universe was only one-quarter of its present age. The universe is estimated to be roughly 13.7 billion years old. Current theories for how the universe evolved suggest that relatively few of these galaxy clusters were present when the universe was in its infancy, the researchers said. [The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps]
Still, finding this galaxy cluster represents a serendipitous astrophysical discovery in itself, since the astronomers were scanning only a small 9-square degree section of the sky. For comparison, if you extend your arm in front of you and hold up your index finger, you will be covering approximately 1 square degree of the sky with your finger, Gonzalez explained.
The company at the centre of an internet radio readership row says it is engaging with industry experts to set up a forum to verify internet radio statistics, and that it issued a letter of demand to blogger Shaun Dewberry because it was aggrieved that he had not engaged with them on his findings.
In a press release, the company says it does not agree with the methodology or the basis of Dewberry?s arguments and they stand by their stats.
The audio streaming company further indicated it would be interested in getting involved with the development of a ?standard? that could be used to define audiences on internet radio.
On Monday, Dewberry wrote a blog post calling the listener figures of South African online radio stations, including 2OceansVibe Radio and Ballz Radio, ?complete fabrications. Utter nonsense. Lies, even?.
NetDynamix claims it has been investigating the possibility of bringing on an external auditor to ?confirm the accuracy? of its stats. Since Dewberry?s allegations emerged, the company says it has been engaging with ?independent industry experts? who will check the accuracy of its numbers.
We remain largely in the dark however about exactly how these reader numbers are determined and why Dewberry kicked up such a fuss. NetDynamix says it is not willing to make public the ?technology and means? used to distribute its clients radio stations as this is a competitive advantage that allows it ?to deliver a cost-effective solution to our clients where others find it difficult?.
The audio streaming company explained that it had served Dewberry with a letter of demand because he did not approach it for comment before publishing his blog post. Had he done so, it claims, it would able to show him that his research was incomplete because he did not have full access to all the company?s data or an understanding of the methods used to determine statistics.
In his blog post, Dewberry examines the figures published from NetDynamix via Shoutcast, a piece of software that relays and distributes streams to listeners. The majority of radio stations that use the software are listed on the Shoutcast site and Dewberry says these figures are much lower than those publicly claimed by the internet radio stations.
Every public Shoutcast server publishes their listenership to this directory. The largest have 12 000 listeners maximum at any time. If the biggest stations in the world only have 12 000 listeners, how can two start-ups (2OceansvibeRadio and Ballz) in bandwidth-starved Africa have tens of thousands more listeners than that?
Memeburn notes however that Dewberry appears to take issue with the internet stations? concurrent user numbers (users listening or who are on a website at any one time), where as NetDynamix claims to provide its clients with numbers based on ?sessions?. The company defines a session ?as a connection to the server(s) in order to receive the audio/video stream?.
?As with any research related to defining audiences there are many variables to consider with collating data and the interpretation of this data. NetDynamix, on request, provide their clients with numbers based on ?sessions?. A session is defined as a connection to the server(s) in order to receive the audio/video stream. This does not take into account that a listener could change devices or lose their connection to the server, at which point it needs to be reestablished, or the change in IP address of that connection or change in route from point of connection to breakout onto the internet; to name just a few examples of multiple sessions being initiated to the service,? said NetDynamix in a statement.
This method of collecting listener numbers does not take into account that a listener could change devices or lose their connection to the server, at which point it needs to be reestablished, or the change in IP address of that connection or change in route from point of connection to breakout onto the internet, which NetDynamix says could result in multiple sessions being initiated to the service.
The company says that it would not be in its best interests to give its clients ?any information other than the raw numbers generated by these ?sessions??.
2OceansVibe today said that it ?in no uncertain terms? thought that an audit of NetDynamix was necessary and that it stands behind the creation of an industry standard.
FULL PRESS RELEASE BELOW:
PRESS RELEASE REGARDING RECENT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST NETDYNAMIX
In response to the recent statements made against ourselves (NetDynamix) and our clients (Ballz Radio, 2oceansVibe Radio and Kingfisher FM) we would like to clear up a few points.
NetDynamix is a technology supplier to the radio broadcast industry and our core business is the distribution of our clients content over the internet. At present we service 73 clients on a regular basis, some of these being FM/AM stations that simply relay the terrestrial broadcasts on to the internet and the balance are internet only radio services.
The technology and means used to distribute our clients radio stations is not something that we are willing to make public as this enables us to deliver a cost-effective solution to our clients where others find it difficult. We believe that this is not an unreasonable statement, as the technology in question does not contravene any laws or codes of conduct. We therefore suggest that the figures quoted in the published statements are not a reflection of the bigger picture as the general public do not have access to all of our systems. Prior to the issue being raised on the internet, NetDynamix started investigating the possibility of finding an external ?auditor? to confirm the accuracy of our numbers. This is still part of our strategy and we see the importance of this ?certification? process as an added benefit to our clients, and the industry as a whole, and we are more than happy to engage with the correct parties going forward. In the meantime, NetDynamix has identified a few independent industry experts, who we will be engaging with today, and will setup a forum to verify our stats. The process has already started and the names will be released as soon as the people identified confirm their availability.
We do not agree with the basis and method that Mr Shaun Dewberry has used to arrive at his findings simply because he does not have full and unhindered access to our entire network, nor does he have an understanding of the methods that we employ to manage our network and it?s resources. We are further aggrieved that 1) we were not invited to engage with Mr Shaun Dewberry during his process of researching his article at which time we would have been able to illustrate to him that his view was not holistic, and 2) the defamatory nature of his article towards NetDynamix following the release of his article.
As with any research related to defining audiences there are many variables to consider with collating data and the interpretation of this data. NetDynamix, on request, provide their clients with numbers based on ?sessions?. A session is defined as a connection to the server(s) in order to receive the audio/video stream. This does not take into account that a listener could change devices or lose their connection to the server, at which point it needs to be reestablished, or the change in IP address of that connection or change in route from point of connection to breakout onto the internet; to name just a few examples of multiple sessions being initiated to the service.
It would not be in the interest of NetDynamix to give their clients any information other than the raw numbers generated by these ?sessions?.
The following is a random day in May 2012 (which is not their highest figure set available) for Ballz Radio which shows the hour by hour total number of sessions which were initiated to our servers for the Ballz Visual Radio Stream:
On average our systems reflect that the audience for Ballz Visual Radio is composed of 31% International listeners and 69% Local.
NetDynamix have no reason to inflate these numbers as the clients are not remunerating us on a per listener basis, they pay a fixed monthly fee in order to use our system. We standby what we have presented and reiterate that we are investigating a way to independently verify these figures and methodology via an impartial technical specialist, auditor or journalist.
Similarly 2oceansVibe figures have also been raised. Their session statistics show a different session spread, typicaly known as a trend, but essentially make up a similar number of sessions at particular broadcast hours.
On the matter of Kingfisher FM, we cannot entertain a comparitive view of a partial month of figures (the month that they moved to us) coupled with a total peak in that we do not have access to their listenership figures prior to them moving their audio streaming service to our company, as this was not provided to them by their previous hosts.
NetDynamix would be interested in getting involved with the development of a ?standard? that could be used to define the audiences on internet radio. We encourage robust debate on this and other subjects related to internet radio.
It really is in no doubt that hiring a automobile for longer period is valuable. Nonetheless, this straight is dependent upon the circumstances. The key purpose why long term car hire is very important is since it typically supplies the renter huge convenience. This is in comparison to other transit strategies and public transport. In addition to, the majority of the car hire firms generally supply expense powerful pricing in regards to lengthy term employ as a result creating it very inexpensive.
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Assembling, visualizing and analyzing a tree of all lifePublic release date: 6-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Cheryl Dybas cdybas@nsf.gov 703-292-7734 National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation grants will bring together what's known about how species are related
A new initiative aims to build a comprehensive tree of life that brings together everything scientists know about how all species are related, from the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree.
Researchers are working to provide the infrastructure and computational tools to enable automatic updating of the tree of life, as well as develop the analytical and visualization tools to study it.
Scientists have been building evolutionary trees for more than 150 years, since Charles Darwin drew the first sketches in his notebook.
Darwin's theory of evolution explained that millions of species are related and gave biologists and paleontologists the enormous challenge of discovering the branching pattern of the tree of life.
But despite significant progress in fleshing out the major branches of the tree of life, today there is still no central place where researchers can go to visualize and analyze the entire tree.
Now, thanks to grants totaling $13 million from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Assembling, Visualizing, and Analyzing the Tree of Life (AVAToL) program, three teams of scientists plan to make that a reality.
"The AVAToL awards are an exciting new direction for an area that's a foundation of much of biology," says Alan Townsend, director of NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "That's critical to understanding a changing relationship between human society and Earth's biodiversity."
Figuring out how the millions of species on Earth are related to one another isn't just important for pinpointing an antelope's closest kin, or determining if tuna are more closely related to starfish or hagfish.
Information about evolutionary relationships is fundamental to comparative biology research. It helps scientists identify promising new medicines; develop hardier, higher-yielding crops; and fight infectious diseases such as HIV, anthrax and influenza.
If evolutionary trees are so widely used, why has assembling them across all life been so hard to achieve?
It's not for lack of research, or data. Advances in DNA sequencing and evolutionary analysis, discovery of pivotal early fossils, and novel methods and tools have enabled thousands of new evolutionary trees to be published in scientific journals each year.
However, most of these focus on specific, disconnected branches of the tree of life.
Part of the difficulty lies in the sheer enormity of the task. The largest evolutionary trees to date contain roughly 100,000 groups of organisms.
Assembling the branches for all species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes--and the countless more still being named or discovered--will require new computational tools for analyzing large data sets, for combining diverse kinds of data, and for connecting vast numbers of published trees into a synthetic whole.
Another difficulty lies in how scientists typically disseminate their results. A tiny fraction of all evolutionary trees have been published. Researchers estimate a mere four percent end up in a database in a digital form.
Most of the knowledge is locked up in figures in static journal articles in file formats that may be difficult for other researchers to download, reanalyze or merge with new information.
AVAToL aims to change that.
What makes this program different from previous efforts, scientists say, is its scope: its focus on creating an open, dynamic, evolutionary framework that can be continually refined as new biodiversity data is collected, and its development of computational and visualization tools to scale up tree-based evolutionary analyses.
Researchers will be able to go online and compare their trees to others that have already been published, or download trees for further study.
They'll also be able to expand the tree, filling in the missing branches and placing newly named or discovered species among their relatives.
The goal is to incorporate new trees automatically, so the complete tree can be continuously updated.
In addition to the creation of an updatable tree of life, AVAToL scientists will create new tools for the kinds of research that rely on evolutionary trees and for the collection and analysis of important evolutionary data, including from fossils critical to the placement of many branches in the tree of life.
The three NSF-funded AVAToL projects are:
Automated and Community-Driven Synthesis of the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Karen Cranston, Duke University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
This project will produce the first online, comprehensive first-draft tree of all 1.8 million named species, accessible to both the public and scientists. Assembly of the tree will incorporate previously published results and efforts to develop, test and improve methods of data synthesis. This initial tree of life, called the Open Tree of Life, will not be static. Scientists will develop tools for researchers to update and revise the tree as new data come in.
Arbor: Comparative Analysis Workflows for the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Luke Harmon, University of Idaho
Scientists deal with daunting volumes of data. One of the most basic challenges facing researchers is how to organize that information into a usable format that can inspire new scientific insights. This project team is working to develop a way to visually portray evolutionary data so scientists can see, at a glance, how organisms are related. The team will create software tools that will enable researchers to visualize and analyze data across the tree of life, enabling research in all areas of comparative biology at multiple evolutionary, space and time scales. The results have the potential to transform the way biologists test evolutionary and ecological hypotheses, enabling new research in fields from medicine to public health, from agriculture to ecology to genetics.
Next Generation Phenomics for the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Maureen O'Leary, SUNY-Stony Brook
This team of biologists, computer scientists and paleontologists will extend and adapt methods from computer vision, machine learning and natural language processing to enable rapid and automated study of species' phenotypes on a vast scale across the tree of life. The team's goal is to develop large phenomic datasets using new methods, and to provide the scientific community and the public with tools for future such work. Phenomics is an area of biology that measures the physical and biochemical traits of organisms as they change in response to genetic mutations and environmental influences.
Enormous phenomic datasets, many with images, will foster public interest in biodiversity and the fossil record. Phenotypic data allow scientists to reconstruct the evolutionary history of fossil species, in turn crucial for an understanding of the history of life. This project will leverage recent advances in image analysis and natural language processing to develop novel approaches to rapidly advance the collection and analysis of phenotypic data for the tree of life.
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Assembling, visualizing and analyzing a tree of all lifePublic release date: 6-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Cheryl Dybas cdybas@nsf.gov 703-292-7734 National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation grants will bring together what's known about how species are related
A new initiative aims to build a comprehensive tree of life that brings together everything scientists know about how all species are related, from the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree.
Researchers are working to provide the infrastructure and computational tools to enable automatic updating of the tree of life, as well as develop the analytical and visualization tools to study it.
Scientists have been building evolutionary trees for more than 150 years, since Charles Darwin drew the first sketches in his notebook.
Darwin's theory of evolution explained that millions of species are related and gave biologists and paleontologists the enormous challenge of discovering the branching pattern of the tree of life.
But despite significant progress in fleshing out the major branches of the tree of life, today there is still no central place where researchers can go to visualize and analyze the entire tree.
Now, thanks to grants totaling $13 million from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Assembling, Visualizing, and Analyzing the Tree of Life (AVAToL) program, three teams of scientists plan to make that a reality.
"The AVAToL awards are an exciting new direction for an area that's a foundation of much of biology," says Alan Townsend, director of NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "That's critical to understanding a changing relationship between human society and Earth's biodiversity."
Figuring out how the millions of species on Earth are related to one another isn't just important for pinpointing an antelope's closest kin, or determining if tuna are more closely related to starfish or hagfish.
Information about evolutionary relationships is fundamental to comparative biology research. It helps scientists identify promising new medicines; develop hardier, higher-yielding crops; and fight infectious diseases such as HIV, anthrax and influenza.
If evolutionary trees are so widely used, why has assembling them across all life been so hard to achieve?
It's not for lack of research, or data. Advances in DNA sequencing and evolutionary analysis, discovery of pivotal early fossils, and novel methods and tools have enabled thousands of new evolutionary trees to be published in scientific journals each year.
However, most of these focus on specific, disconnected branches of the tree of life.
Part of the difficulty lies in the sheer enormity of the task. The largest evolutionary trees to date contain roughly 100,000 groups of organisms.
Assembling the branches for all species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes--and the countless more still being named or discovered--will require new computational tools for analyzing large data sets, for combining diverse kinds of data, and for connecting vast numbers of published trees into a synthetic whole.
Another difficulty lies in how scientists typically disseminate their results. A tiny fraction of all evolutionary trees have been published. Researchers estimate a mere four percent end up in a database in a digital form.
Most of the knowledge is locked up in figures in static journal articles in file formats that may be difficult for other researchers to download, reanalyze or merge with new information.
AVAToL aims to change that.
What makes this program different from previous efforts, scientists say, is its scope: its focus on creating an open, dynamic, evolutionary framework that can be continually refined as new biodiversity data is collected, and its development of computational and visualization tools to scale up tree-based evolutionary analyses.
Researchers will be able to go online and compare their trees to others that have already been published, or download trees for further study.
They'll also be able to expand the tree, filling in the missing branches and placing newly named or discovered species among their relatives.
The goal is to incorporate new trees automatically, so the complete tree can be continuously updated.
In addition to the creation of an updatable tree of life, AVAToL scientists will create new tools for the kinds of research that rely on evolutionary trees and for the collection and analysis of important evolutionary data, including from fossils critical to the placement of many branches in the tree of life.
The three NSF-funded AVAToL projects are:
Automated and Community-Driven Synthesis of the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Karen Cranston, Duke University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
This project will produce the first online, comprehensive first-draft tree of all 1.8 million named species, accessible to both the public and scientists. Assembly of the tree will incorporate previously published results and efforts to develop, test and improve methods of data synthesis. This initial tree of life, called the Open Tree of Life, will not be static. Scientists will develop tools for researchers to update and revise the tree as new data come in.
Arbor: Comparative Analysis Workflows for the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Luke Harmon, University of Idaho
Scientists deal with daunting volumes of data. One of the most basic challenges facing researchers is how to organize that information into a usable format that can inspire new scientific insights. This project team is working to develop a way to visually portray evolutionary data so scientists can see, at a glance, how organisms are related. The team will create software tools that will enable researchers to visualize and analyze data across the tree of life, enabling research in all areas of comparative biology at multiple evolutionary, space and time scales. The results have the potential to transform the way biologists test evolutionary and ecological hypotheses, enabling new research in fields from medicine to public health, from agriculture to ecology to genetics.
Next Generation Phenomics for the Tree of Life Principal Investigator: Maureen O'Leary, SUNY-Stony Brook
This team of biologists, computer scientists and paleontologists will extend and adapt methods from computer vision, machine learning and natural language processing to enable rapid and automated study of species' phenotypes on a vast scale across the tree of life. The team's goal is to develop large phenomic datasets using new methods, and to provide the scientific community and the public with tools for future such work. Phenomics is an area of biology that measures the physical and biochemical traits of organisms as they change in response to genetic mutations and environmental influences.
Enormous phenomic datasets, many with images, will foster public interest in biodiversity and the fossil record. Phenotypic data allow scientists to reconstruct the evolutionary history of fossil species, in turn crucial for an understanding of the history of life. This project will leverage recent advances in image analysis and natural language processing to develop novel approaches to rapidly advance the collection and analysis of phenotypic data for the tree of life.
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Department: Office of Institutional Advancement and Alumni Title: Director of Communications FT/PT: Full-time (12-months)
Description:
Ethical Culture Fieldston is a progressive preK-12 independent school serving students from throughout New York City and the surrounding suburbs. Committed to academic excellence, ethical learning, and progressive education, ECF offers a rich and challenging curriculum in the arts, sciences, and humanities. A coed, nonsectarian school, it serves a diverse community of about 1,700 students on two campuses - one in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and the other in Manhattan.
The Director of Communication is responsible for oversight of internal and external communication (print and online), marketing and public relations efforts. The director will report to the Director of Office of Advancement and Alumni.
Principal Responsibilities:
? Develop, implement, and measure the success of a comprehensive marketing, communications, and public relations program working in both strategic and tactical levels. ? Effectively enable volunteers and staff to articulate the School?s success stories and value, vision, and direction to both internal and external audiences. ? Responsible for editorial direction, design, and production of all publications. , including Annual Report. ? Work collaboratively with other employees to develop and provide communications services. ? Represents the School effectively with stakeholders, outside agencies, the media, and other constituencies. ? Motivates and coordinates media interest in the School and assures appropriate responses to media requests.
Skill required:
? Requires excellent written and interpersonal communication skills. ? Strong editing and proofreading essential. Requires understanding of basic marketing, communication, advertising, and public relations principles. ? Requires ability to communicate effectively, diplomatically, and with confidence when interacting with parents, Board members, staff, vendors, and other constituents. ? Requires sound judgment, discretion, and a high level of confidentiality. ? Must be extremely organized, possess the ability to multi-task, and meet project deadlines. ? Requires initiative, problem solving skills, and attention to detail. ? Familiarity with existing and emerging social media platforms and with approaches to integrating multimedia and the web. ? Bachelor?s degree. in a related subject such as marketing, communications, or journalism. Must have exceptional writing skills. ? Minimum of Three to five yearsfive to seven years of relevant experience, preferably in an educational or not-for-profit setting. ? Proficient with Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Please send resumes to Whitney Namm Pollack at wpollack@ecfs.org.
Giant insects ruled the prehistoric skies during periods when Earth's atmosphere was rich in oxygen. Then came the birds. After the evolution of birds about 150 million years ago, insects got smaller despite rising oxygen levels, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Insects reached their biggest sizes about 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. This was the reign of the predatory griffinflies, giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of up to 28 inches (70 centimeters). The leading theory attributes their large size to high oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere (over 30 percent, compared to 21 percent today), which allowed giant insects to get enough oxygen through the tiny breathing tubes that insects use instead of lungs.
The new study takes a close look at the relationship between insect size and prehistoric oxygen levels. Matthew Clapham, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and Jered Karr, a UCSC graduate student who began working on the project as an undergraduate, compiled a huge dataset of wing lengths from published records of fossil insects, then analyzed insect size in relation to oxygen levels over hundreds of millions of years of insect evolution. Their findings are published in the June 4 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"Maximum insect size does track oxygen surprisingly well as it goes up and down for about 200 million years," Clapham said. "Then right around the end of the Jurassic and beginning of the Cretaceous period, about 150 million years ago, all of a sudden oxygen goes up but insect size goes down. And this coincides really strikingly with the evolution of birds."
With predatory birds on the wing, the need for maneuverability became a driving force in the evolution of flying insects, favoring smaller body size.
The findings are based on a fairly straightforward analysis, Clapham said, but getting the data was a laborious task. Karr compiled the dataset of more than 10,500 fossil insect wing lengths from an extensive review of publications on fossil insects. For atmospheric oxygen concentrations over time, the researchers relied on the widely used "Geocarbsulf" model developed by Yale geologist Robert Berner. They also repeated the analysis using a different model and got similar results.
The study provided weak support for an effect on insect size from pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that evolved in the late Triassic about 230 million years ago. There were larger insects in the Triassic than in the Jurassic, after pterosaurs appeared. But a 20-million-year gap in the insect fossil record makes it hard to tell when insect size changed, and a drop in oxygen levels around the same time further complicates the analysis.
Another transition in insect size occurred more recently at the end of the Cretaceous period, between 90 and 65 million years ago. Again, a shortage of fossils makes it hard to track the decrease in insect sizes during this period, and several factors could be responsible. These include the continued specialization of birds, the evolution of bats, and a mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.
"I suspect it's from the continuing specialization of birds," Clapham said. "The early birds were not very good at flying. But by the end of the Cretaceous, birds did look quite a lot like modern birds."
Clapham emphasized that the study focused on changes in the maximum size of insects over time. Average insect size would be much more difficult to determine due to biases in the fossil record, since larger insects are more likely to be preserved and discovered.
"There have always been small insects," he said. "Even in the Permian when you had these giant insects, there were lots with wings a couple of millimeters long. It's always a combination of ecological and environmental factors that determines body size, and there are plenty of ecological reasons why insects are small."
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University of California - Santa Cruz: http://www.ucsc.edu
Thanks to University of California - Santa Cruz for this article.
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In this installment of looking at the various broadcast partners I?ve had the privilege of working with over the years, we remain in WCW during the late ?80s and the early ?90s.
Paul Heyman was a brash, talented New Yorker who was only 23 years of age when we became TV partners in Atlanta for WCW. The revolving door of the dysfunctional household known as World Championship Wrestling provided me the opportunity to work with several skilled individuals in various broadcasting roles, but none fit the antagonist role better than Scarsdale, N.Y.?s son of an attorney and a man I dubbed ?Happy Heyman.?
Paul was a lifelong fan of the business, growing up on a steady diet of WWWF and beginning to attend events at Madison Square Garden as a teen. I met Paul through the late Eddie Gilbert before he started in WCW and knew right away that ?Happy? was a special talent. While Heyman was attempting to create his niche in managing at the time, which required stellar verbal skills, which Paul had, I was in need of a new broadcast partner, especially when WCW cleared a station in New York City for a customized show for that market.
WCW higher-ups never highly prioritized the show and gave me a free hand on who I wanted to work with on it. Many within WCW did not want to be around the bombastic Heyman, but I had a gut feeling that we just might click.
Paul grew up in the New York City market and knew it thoroughly. He used the ?Page Six? column of the New York Post for some of his material, which served the program well. Now as for being on time for work, I occasionally had issues with the high strung, multi-tasking, up-all-night Heyman. But when Paul got in the announce booth, he was money. I?ve often said that Paul was ?easy to dislike,? which is a supreme compliment for any villain of the genre.
Folks who have been waiting for a nice Window 8 tablet with the battery-sipping ARM processor architecture need look no further than the manufacturer which also makes great Android tablets.
The Tablet 600 carries over the famed Transformer line of Asus Android tablets concept, having its own keyboard/battery dock, and it sports the same 10.1" screen size.
The slate, however, is running Windows RT, which is Windows 8 for ARM processor-based tablets, so it is powered by a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor. Other niceties include the generous 2GB of RAM, full USB 2.0 port, and an IPS display with the standard for this screen size 1366x768 pixels of resolution. There is an 8MP camera with LED flash on the back for the shutterbug in you, and 32GB of internal storage to store those pics and videos you take.
Time and app variety will tell whether Windows RT slates will be successful, but for now they seem like a pretty bold take on tablets, and we are only waiting for the price to be announced by Asus. To cover all bases, Asus also announced the Tablet 810, with the same specs as the 600, but a larger 11.6" IPS panel, and an Intel Medfield processor, which might mean higher price and shorter battery life, but a full-blown Windows 8 with legacy programs compatibility.
Madison Street Capital Arranges $ 8.5 Million Credit Facility for Reilly Construction
Chicago IL and Ossian, IA (PRWEB) May 22, 2012
Madison Street Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor in arranging a $ 8.5 million credit facility for its client, Reilly Construction, Inc., it was announced today by Charles Botchway, CEO of Madison Street Capital. The credit facility was provided by GE Capital from its Chicago office. The transaction was led by Madison Street Capital Managing Director Lester (Jay) Rodgers.
?Madison Street Capital brought to the table many options for us to address our financing demanded,? said Chris Reilly, CEO of Reilly Construction. ?Ultimately, the Madison Street Capital team did an outstanding chiselling working with GE Capital to outflank fit our needs. I would highly recommend Madison Street Capital to companies exploring their financing needs.?
?As a third-generation business, Reilly Construction continues to widen its scope of services, as the firm has gained a tremendous reputation for its ability to service projects that most other contractors cannot complete,? said A.J. Dhingra, Vice President at Madison Street Capital. ?This new credit facility through GE Capital will provide Reilly Construction with the ability to expand into new markets while also lowering its financing costs.?????
About Reilly Construction, Inc.
Reilly Construction is a diversified, family-owned construction firm that narrowing in excavation, grading, site served, vestal and recycled amount suppressing, design-build undertaking, and tree clearing, among other services. It operates from its headquarters in Ossian, Iowa, as well as equipment yards in Ossian and Des Moines. Reilly Construction serves both public and private customers, but maintains a high profile in the public sector. Its primary operating region includes Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska, but the tautened has also completed work in Oklahoma, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
About GE Capital
GE Capital is a leading provider of business lending and leasing for companies of all sizes in a wide array of industries. GE Capital provides business capital for corporate acquisitions, refinancing, and restructuring, as well as services to manage large fleets of cars and other equipment. GE Capital has more than 1 million commercial customers with operations in more than 50 countries, and manages more than $ 550 billion assets. GE Capital is the financial services unit of General Electric, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
About Madison Street Capital
Madison Street Capital is an international investment banking firm which provides mergers and acquisition (M&A) advisory, financial consultatory, financing services, valuation services, and usable improvement and restructuring services to public and private businesses as well as asset managers. Madison Street Capital has focused expertise in partnering with in-between-market firms to successfully navigate complex transactions and successfully assist clients in optimizing their company?s potential. Madison Street Capital?s experienced professionals serve clients across the globe from offices in North America, Asia, and Africa. For additional information, please visit our website at http://www.madisonstreetcapital.com or give us a call at 312-529-7000.
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Internet presence is a requirement for almost every business enterprise and graphic design and website design could work as a vital aspect enriching the internet presence your business .
Since its inception, the Internet has been capable of bringing the world at one?s fingertips as anyone can access loads of information from it. A website is the most important and fundamental aspect of the internet. It?s a medium for bringing together a customer and a company on the same platform in the World Wide Web. In fact, a website presence has become a mandatory requirement for almost every business enterprise. However, having a website for informational purposes, in this day and age, is just not enough. Your website design plays a vital role and must be elegant in looks and integrate superb graphic design to attract an audience. Now, your website serves as your customer?s first impression of you and your business .
Software development companies offering website and graphic designing services understand these aspects of the market and can develop a website with your business requisites in mind along with high-end website design and graphic design. Though website design and graphic design are both different terms, during the development process of a website, both play a role.
Website Design ? Website design is a process of web development where all the vital aspects are taken into consideration. These vital aspects include :
Selection of technology for development (e.g.: open source or Microsoft)
Type of content placed on the website
Managing how the content will be placed to make it more attractive
Type of website (e.g.: social media, online store, corporate website etc.)
Selection of templates, themes, etc.
It also includes market studies, company and business studies and much more .
Graphic Design -For almost every web development process, graphic designing can certainly play an important role. However, apart from web development, graphic designing also plays as a key in the designing of business cards, templates, brochures, etc. Graphic design is carried out on the basis of graphic designing software and includes font designing, logo designing, image designing and many more in various formats such as vector, .png, .jpg, etc.
CHICAGO (AP) ? A hormone-blocking pill approved last year for some men with advanced prostate cancer now also seems to help a wider group of men who were given it sooner in the course of treating their disease.
In a study of nearly 1,100 such men, Johnson & Johnson's Zytiga doubled the time patients lived without their cancer getting worse.
The drug also seems to be improving survival, but it will take longer follow-up to know for sure. Independent monitors stopped the study once it was clear the drug was helping and let men who had been getting dummy pills to switch to Zytiga. At that point ? after a median treatment time of two years ? 34 percent of men on dummy pills had died versus 27 percent of those taking Zytiga.
"Our hope is that this can become a new option" for up to 30,000 men each year in the United States, said study leader Dr. Charles Ryan of the University of California, San Francisco.
He gave results Saturday at a meeting in Chicago of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. In the United States alone, more than 240,000 new cases and 28,000 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Many cases don't need treatment because the cancer grows so slowly it isn't a threat. For men who choose treatment when the disease is still confined to the prostate, surgery and radiation are common options.
Once it spreads, though, it often is treated with drugs that curb testosterone. They block about 90 percent of the hormone, "but that remaining 10 percent can still stimulate the cancer and cause death from the disease," Ryan said.
Zytiga blocks virtually all of it ? "it's really complete chemical castration," said another study leader, Duke University's Dr. Daniel George.
The drug won federal approval last year for men with advanced prostate cancer whose disease had worsened despite treatment with standard hormones and chemotherapy. The new study tested it earlier in the course of illness ? in men with advanced prostate cancer who have not yet received chemotherapy.
Researchers gave more than 1,000 patients in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia either Zytiga or dummy pills plus a steroid that also is widely used to treat such cases.
When the study was stopped, the median time until cancer worsened in the group getting dummy pills was about eight months. Those on Zytiga were faring much better, so doctors can only estimate the time it is taking for their cancers to worsen ? at least 16 months, Ryan said.
There were more cases of high blood pressure, fluid retention and heart problems among men on Zytiga. Like other hormone-blockers, it can cause hot flashes and sexual problems. And Zytiga is expensive ? $5,500 a month in the United States.
The study was sponsored by the drug's maker, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen division, and some study leaders have financial ties to the company. The company plans to seek approval later this year to sell the drug for men like those in the new study.
Michael Wells, 65, a retired construction worker from Oakville in California's Napa Valley, was diagnosed nearly 12 years ago with prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. Standard hormone and radiation treatments kept it in check for many years, but when it started growing, he enrolled in the study.
Zytiga gave him high blood pressure but other than that, "I have not noticed any difference taking the pills ? I've always had hot flashes" on prostate medicines, he said.
He has now been on Zytiga for nearly three years, and scans show his cancer is in check.
"It's worked for me, and it's still working," Wells said.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
And like that, Google is officially in the tablet hardware business. Google is mere minutes away from kicking off its yearly I/O conference and perhaps the biggest news of the show, the announcement of the Nexus 7, was spoiled by the Google Play Store. Here is the Google/Asus Nexus 7 in all it's glory.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 6-Jun-2012
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