Thursday, February 28, 2013

Why It?s Smart to Be Reckless on Wall Street

Here is a guaranteed way to get paid well if you work on Wall Street. Find a best friend at a competing bank or hedge fund and take opposite sides of the same large bet. In one year?s time one of you will have a huge profit and get paid well. The other person will have lost and perhaps be fired. The sum of both your profits will be zero, but the sum of what you get paid will be positive. Split the pay.

This scheme is one of the more fanciful ways to exploit Wall Street?s compensation structure that pays absurdly well in the good years and just okay in the bad years. Losing money never means having to give anything back.

That asymmetry in pay (money for profits, flat for losses) is the engine behind many of Wall Street?s mistakes. It rewards short-term gains without regard to long-term consequences. The results? The over-reliance on excessive leverage, banks that are loaded with opaque financial products, and trading models that are flawed.

Regulation is largely toothless if banks and their employees have the financial incentive to be reckless.

How does Wall Street pay its employees? At the end of each year traders are paid a base salary and a bonus. The bonus, which fluctuates wildly, is usually a percentage of a trader?s profit. Some companies even pay a contractual amount, often between ten and fifteen percent. The average bonus of all employees is about three hundred thousand dollars but payments of $1 to $15 million are common. If traders lose they still get their base, often around two hundred thousand dollars. If their loss is great enough, they are fired. They never have to return money.

The incentives are clear. If you make a bunch of money you get personally wealthy. If you lose then you just go home and look for a new job.

Losing lots of money is hardly the career ender that outsiders imagine. If traders lose big then they will get fired, but they will now have experience. If one loses really big then one has almost a badge of honor. One could not be allowed to lose $1 billion unless one was really important.

Wall Street is littered with traders who have ?blown up? at multiple establishments or funds. There are enough to fill up a town about the size of, well, West Hampton.

Here is a more conventional blueprint to personal wealth via Wall Street.

Join a business that has an established track record. Start small, building up a few solid years of making decent profits. Do this for six or seven years. It?s called ?milking the franchise.? Soon you will have respect and, most of all, expanded limits on what you can trade. Wait for a year when everyone is bullish. Then swing big. Really big. Don?t take judicious risk; take the most risk the firm will allow you. Follow the momentum, piling into trades others are doing.

If you win, since you followed the herd, Wall Street will be flush with cash and you will get paid well, tens of millions well. If you lose you may get fired, but since everyone lost they will understand.

This strategy is certainly not in the long-term interest of the firm, but it?s the smartest strategy to benefit the trader.

The closest other field of employment to Wall Street in compensation is professional sports. They also pay large yearly contracts meant to encourage employees to increase their performances. Sometimes those employees fail miserably, hurting their team.

Banks are not sports teams though. They are institutions that occupy a special place in the economy and are given special status, and as such, have an obligation to ensure their long-term health. The only harm if the Yankees overpay for a pitcher (and they always do) is distraught Yankees fans. If banks lose, especially ones with $2 trillion in assets, we all lose.

The incentives at these banks should consequently be structured to discourage, not encourage, short-term speculation and risk taking, with the primary goal of guaranteeing the bank?s solvency. Rather than pay employees based on how much they made the prior 365 days, pay should be based on their entire careers, with the bulk of compensation coming in a form that can be taken away with future losses.

Independent hedge funds can pay however they want. It is up to the investors to decide how they want to compensate their money manager and few funds are large enough to be ?too big to fail.?

Here is a third scheme. Sell insurance on a rare event, something with a payoff around one in a hundred. Sell lots of it and convince regulators that it?s a one in a thousand event so you can account for the premium as a profit. You now have a steady revenue stream, which will pay your company well.

What if it?s actually a far more common event, something like one in ten? You will lose huge eventually. Your company, if it did enough of this trade, will go bankrupt. You however will have had three to four good years and can walk away.

Far fetched?

This is exactly what happened from 2002 until 2008. The one in a hundred event was US housing prices dropping 30% or more. Who did this: Bear-Stearns, AIG, Lehman Bothers, Merrill Lynch, and others. The insurance they sold: Buying and structuring esoteric mortgage bonds.

How did it work? If housing prices rose or stayed flat or fell slightly, the bonds paid a small premium, about a quarter of a percent. If however, housing fell dramatically, then the bonds plummeted.

From 2003 to 2007 housing prices rose. Wall Street took in record profits as the bonds paid. Bonuses paid to traders and executives were also records, with senior traders and managers receiving bonuses between $3 million and $10 million in 2006.

In the middle of 2007 things turned. The housing market did collapse over 30%, triggering huge drops in the bonds. Who lost? Well the banks did, many going broke and requiring a government bailout. The traders and managers who did these trades did well personally. Many were fired, but with enough money to never work again, having collected compensation of roughly $15 million over that period.

Many were later rehired, by hedge funds, to buy the securities at cheap prices after the banks disgorged them.

Were they doing anything illegal? Hard to say. They were doing what Wall Street incentivised them to do.

This also leads to misconceptions about most employees on Wall Street. Few actually abuse the system, contrary to their personal self-interest. Still there is a minority who do, stigmatizing the industry. It often works out wonderfully for them and awfully for the rest.

In 2000 a young PhD in mathematics approached me about a job before eventually landing at a European bank in research. In 2004 he started proprietary trading, where traders bet with the bank?s money. Pay was 15% of the profits. In 2005 he bought obscure and high-yielding corporate bonds, which generated profits of $40 million. He took home $6 million. In 2006 he made $80 million and took home $12 million. In 2007 the world turned and the group was disbanded as losses mounted. He was dismissed, and his trades eventually lost the firm close to $300 million.

What was his PhD thesis about? Game theory, or using math to find the optimal solution to complex systems.

Late last year he sent me an email. ?Chris, why are you still working??

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=e313b1214edc03043f97c8074b88e11d

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Study reveals stem cells in a human parasite

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

From the point of view of its ultimate (human) host, the parasitic flatworm Schistosoma mansoni has a gruesome way of life. It hatches in feces-tainted water, grows into a larva in the body of a snail and then burrows through human skin to take up residence in the veins. Once there, it grows into an adult, mates and, if it's female, starts laying eggs. It can remain in the body for decades.

A new study offers insight into the cellular operations that give this flatworm its extraordinary staying power. The researchers, from the University of Illinois, demonstrated for the first time that S. mansoni harbors adult, non-sexual stem cells that can migrate to various parts of its body and replenish tissues. Their report appears in the journal Nature.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 230 million people are in need of treatment for Schistosoma infections every year. Most live in impoverished areas with little or no access to clean water. Infection with the worm (also known as a blood fluke) can lead to damaging inflammation spurred by the presence of the worm's eggs in human organs and tissues.

"The female lays eggs more or less continuously, on the order of hundreds of eggs per day," said U. of I. cell and developmental biology professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Phillip Newmark, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher James J. Collins III.

"The eggs that don't get excreted in the feces to continue the life cycle actually become embedded inside host tissues, typically the liver, and those eggs trigger a massive inflammatory response that leads to tissue damage."

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of infection, in some cases experiencing delays in growth and brain development as a result of chronic inflammation brought on by the parasites.

The new study began with an insight stemming from years of work on a different flatworm, the planarian, in Newmark's lab. Collins thought that schistosomes might make use of the same kinds of stem cells (called neoblasts in planarians) that allow planarians to regenerate new body parts and organs from even tiny fragments of living tissue.

"It just stood to reason that since schistosomes, like planaria, live so long that they must have a comparable type of system," Collins said. "And since these flatworms are related, it made sense that they would have similar types of cells. But it had never been shown."

In a series of experiments, Collins found that the schistosomes were loaded with proliferating cells that looked and behaved like planarian neoblasts, the cells that give them their amazing powers of regeneration. Like neoblasts, the undifferentiated cells in the schistosomes lived in the mesenchyme, a kind of loose connective tissue that surrounds the organs. And like neoblasts, these cells duplicated their DNA and divided to form two "daughter" cells, one of which copied its DNA again, a process that normally precedes cell division.

"Stem cells do two things," Newmark said. "They divide to make more stem cells and they give rise to cells that can differentiate."

Collins had labeled the cells with fluorescent markers. This allowed him to watch how they behaved. He noted that over the course of a few days, some of the labeled cells migrated into the gut or muscle, to become part of those tissues.

"We label the cells when they're born and then we see what they grow up to become," Collins said. "This is not conclusive evidence that these cells are equivalent to the planarian neoblasts, but it is consistent with the hypothesis that they are."

The researchers went deeper, determining which genes were turned on or off, up or down in the proliferating cells as compared with the non-dividing cells. They identified a gene in the proliferating cells that coded for a growth factor receptor very similar to one found in planarians. When the researchers switched off the parasite's ability to make use of this gene (using a technique called RNA interference in worms grown in the lab), the proliferating cells gradually died out.

"We postulated that these cells are important for the longevity of the parasite," Collins said. "Now we can start asking which genes regulate these cells."

"We started with the big question: How does a simple parasite survive in a host for decades?" Newmark said. "That implies that it has ways of repairing and maintaining its tissues. This study gives us insight into the really interesting biology of these parasites, and it may also open up new doors for making that life cycle a lot shorter."

###

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: http://www.uiuc.edu

Thanks to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 29 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127019/Study_reveals_stem_cells_in_a_human_parasite

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Congress Should Listen To Marissa Mayer

MarissaMayerCongress could learn some lessons from Silicon Valley. Extreme partisan gridlock over the federal budget is inching the country closer to drastic spending cuts, known ominously as "the sequester." Yet, members of Congress?used to be far more agreeable?back when they weren't occupied with four-day weekends raising cash in their districts and, instead, could spend time face-to-face with the colleagues at bi-partisan family BBQs.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YkH3ov2DaE8/

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Mexico reverses foreign investment flows

(AP) ? After decades of depending on inflows of foreign capital to develop its economy, Mexico has turned a corner and become a net exporter of direct investment capital in 2012.

Mexico's central bank announced Monday that Mexican corporations invested about $25.6 billion last year in buying up foreign plants and companies, more than twice the $12.7 foreigners invested directly in Mexican firms.

For a country that still has one foot planted firmly in the developing world, that news worried some analysts and delighted others.

An official confirmed that was the first time in recent memory that outflows exceeded inflows.

Last year was marked by big purchases of European telecom assets by Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, considered the world's richest man.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-25-LT-Mexico-Investment-Milestone/id-97050ef862494a7487956e5ef394f1eb

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Liver stem cells grown in culture: Therapeutic benefit demonstrated

Feb. 25, 2013 ? For decades scientists around the world have attempted to regenerate primary liver cells known as hepatocytes because of their numerous biomedical applications, including hepatitis research, drug metabolism and toxicity studies, as well as transplantation for cirrhosis and other chronic liver conditions. But no lab in the world has been successful in identifying and growing liver stem cells in culture -- using any available technique -- until now.

In the journal Nature, physician-scientists in the Pap? Family Pediatric Research Institute at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Portland, Ore., along with investigators at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research, Utrecht, Netherlands, describe a new method through which they were able to infinitely expand liver stem cells from a mouse in a dish.

"This study raises the hope that the human equivalent of these mouse liver stem cells can be grown in a similar way and efficiently converted into functional liver cells," said Markus Grompe, M.D., study co-author, director of the Pap? Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital; and professor of pediatrics, and molecular and medical genetics in the OHSU School of Medicine.

In a previous Nature study, investigators at the Hubrecht Institute, led by Hans Clever, M.D, Ph.D., were the first to identify stem cells in the small intestine and colon by observing the expression of the adult stem cell marker Lgr5 and growth in response to a growth factor called Wnt. They also hypothesized that the unique expression pattern of Lgr5 could mark stem cells in other adult tissues, including the liver, an organ for which stem cell identification remained elusive.

In the current Nature study, Grompe and colleagues in the Pap? Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher used a modified version of the Clever method and discovered that Wnt-induced Lgr5 expression not only marks stem cell production in the liver, but it also defines a class of stem cells that become active when the liver is damaged.

The scientists were able to grow these liver stem cells exponentially in a dish -- an accomplishment never before achieved -- and then transplant them in a specially designed mouse model of liver disease, where they continued to grow and show a modest therapeutic effect.

"We were able to massively expand the liver cells and subsequently convert them to hepatocytes at a modest percentage. Going forward, we will enlist other growth factors and conditions to improve that percentage. Liver stem cell therapy for chronic liver disease in humans is coming," said Grompe.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Oregon Health & Science University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Meritxell Huch, Craig Dorrell, Sylvia F. Boj, Johan H. van Es, Vivian S. W. Li, Marc van de Wetering, Toshiro Sato, Karien Hamer, Nobuo Sasaki, Milton J. Finegold, Annelise Haft, Robert G. Vries, Markus Grompe, Hans Clevers. In vitro expansion of single Lgr5 liver stem cells induced by Wnt-driven regeneration. Nature, 2013; 494 (7436): 247 DOI: 10.1038/nature11826

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/co-OcQp_tVg/130225153130.htm

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Monday, February 25, 2013

March of the pathogens: Parasite metabolism can foretell disease ranges under climate change

March of the pathogens: Parasite metabolism can foretell disease ranges under climate change

Monday, February 25, 2013

Knowing the temperatures that viruses, bacteria, worms and all other parasites need to grow and survive could help determine the future range of infectious diseases under climate change, according to new research.

Princeton University researchers developed a model that can identify the prospects for nearly any disease-causing parasite as the Earth grows warmer, even if little is known about the organism. Their method calculates how the projected temperature change for an area would alter the creature's metabolism and life cycle, the researchers report in the journal Ecology Letters.

Lead author P?ter Moln?r, a Princeton postdoctoral researcher of ecology and evolutionary biology, explained that the technique is an all-inclusive complement to current methods of predicting how climate change will affect disease, which call for a detailed knowledge of the environmental factors a specific parasite needs to thrive. But for many parasites, that information doesn't exist.

The more general Princeton model is based on the metabolic theory of ecology. Under this premise, all biological organisms need a balance between body size and body temperature to maintain the metabolism that keeps their organs functioning. Like any cold-blooded creature, disease-causing parasites rely on external temperatures for this balance. Scientists with knowledge of a parasite's body size and life cycle could use the Princeton metabolic model to predict how the organism would fare in altered climates.

"Our framework is applicable to pretty much any parasite, and utilizes established metabolic patterns shown to hold across a wide variety of species," Moln?r said.

"It would be impossible to ever gather enough data to develop a separate climate-change model for each existing and emerging disease in humans, wildlife and livestock," Moln?r said. "With our physiological approach, many of the parameters for a specific pathogen can be predicted based on what is known about metabolic processes in all parasites, so that the model remains applicable to new and less-studied species as well."

The Princeton model estimates the "fundamental thermal niche" of a parasite, the area between the lowest and highest temperature in which a specific parasite prospers. The researchers show that an organism already kicking around the high end of that range could die out when things heat up, while a parasite lingering at the low end could lead to novel epidemics in host populations and extend to new areas.

Because global temperatures will still differ by elevation and distance from the equator, some parasites also might "migrate" from their previous territory ? rendered inhospitable by higher temperatures ? to one more inviting. That could expose human and animal populations to new diseases to which they may have little natural resistance. Thus, having an idea of which areas a parasite might transition to is important, Moln?r said.

"As metabolism varies with temperature, parasite life-cycle components such as mortality, development, reproduction or infectivity may also vary with temperature," Moln?r said. "If, for a specific parasite, we know the temperature dependence of its metabolism, or the temperature dependence of its life-cycle components, our model allows using these temperature effects to evaluate the impact of climate change on parasite fitness, and thus the regions in which the parasite may occur in the future."

Ryan Hechinger, a biologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said the framework adds to recent research tempering the fear that infectious diseases will uniformly flourish as global temperatures rise. Hechinger, who focuses his research on parasite ecology and evolution, is familiar with the work but had no role in it.

"There has been quite a bit of a 'the sky is falling' attitude from people claiming that infectious diseases are only going to get worse," Hechinger said. "We can't forget that most infectious diseases are caused by living agents. Like most living things, these agents may be negatively or positively affected by climate change. The modeling in this paper clarifies that infectious diseases may increase or decrease under climate change, specifically under global warming."

In addition, Hechinger said, the Princeton technique applies to any parasites that venture outside of a warm-blooded host, including organisms that plague humans, such as Plasmodium, the microorganism that causes malaria.

"If the parasites have stages when they are loose in the environment, they will be impacted by temperature. This goes for parasites with developmental stages in cold-blooded hosts because those hosts are affected by environmental temperatures," Hechinger said.

"So, the modeling framework can work for human malarias because there are parasite stages in cold-blooded mosquitos, or human schistosomiasis [most common in children in developing countries], where the parasite has stages in cold-blooded snails and free-living stages in the open environment," he said.

The Princeton model could potentially appertain to those disease carriers as well, Moln?r said. The framework could predict the future ranges of cold-blooded animals for use in combating invasive species, or even in the conservation of such animals as reptiles and amphibians, he said.

Moln?r worked with senior researcher Andrew Dobson, Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as with second author Susan Kutz, an associate professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary, and Bryanne Hoar, a graduate student in the Kutz lab.

The researchers tested their model on Ostertagia gruehneri, a species of nematode, or roundworm, that lives in the Arctic. Among the world's most widespread parasites, the larval stages of parasitic roundworms are free-living in the environment or utilize a cold-blooded intermediate host, while the adult stages live within their final hosts, and may cause conditions such as trichinosis.

Hoar and Kutz had reared O. gruehneri larvae in various temperatures, and recorded their development and survival. Moln?r and Dobson found that these observations correlated extremely well with how their metabolic model predicted the species would respond to increased Arctic temperatures. Under future conditions, the parasite's infectious season could split from what is now a continuous spring-to-fall transmission season into two longer fall and spring seasons separated by a hot, unlivable summer.

While the seasonal life of a nematode might seem trivial, what affects the parasite affects the host, Moln?r said. The researchers are broadening their model to gauge how O. gruehneri's new active seasons would alter the relationship with its primary host, the caribou. They also are investigating the recent range expansion of a nematode with a penchant for the lungs of muskoxen, a wooly bovine native to the Arctic.

Moln?r and his colleagues want to know what further population growth could be expected from these parasites as the Arctic climate continues to warm, and the eventual toll that would have on caribou and muskoxen herds.

###

Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu

Thanks to Princeton University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 33 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127004/March_of_the_pathogens__Parasite_metabolism_can_foretell_disease_ranges_under_climate_change_

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Will Google Penalize Chromebooks, Google ... - Deon Designs

Google Penalty

A day after warning publishers against advertorials, will Google?s search team now have to penalize parts of its own company for running its advertorials? Perhaps, and if so, it wouldn?t be the first time. It?s also another absurd chapter in Google?s war on paid links.

Google Says: Advertorials, Beware!

After news came out yesterday that Google had apparently penalized Interflora for running advertorials ? and also reduced the PageRank values of many UK newspapers that carried these ? Google finally blogged a general warning against such practices.

From its post:

Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or ?advertorial? pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations

But as Aaron Wall at SEO Book covers today, examples of Google running advertorials could put itself in violation of its own policies.

Google?s Own Advertorials

Wall notes two cases. The first is from the Canadian newspaper, The Globe Mail, which appears to have been running Google advertorials for some time. Wall talked about them two years ago on Twitter, and several of them remain, dating back through 2010 and running until mid-2012.

For example, this one was written by Brett Willms, identified as the country marketing manager for Google Canada:

Someone is on your landing page. Now what? - The Globe and Mail-1

At the top, the first arrow identifies this as a ?special information feature brought to you by Google.? That?s the type of disclosure that media companies often want for human readers, so that they know whether something is written by their own staff (editorial content, typically not influenced by payment) or an advertorial (something that looks like editorial content, but where the content may be written or directed by an advertiser).

This particular disclosure could also be interpreted as editorial content that is sponsored by Google in the way that many sites are supported by ad sponsorship generally, but where the ads don?t dictate the coverage. If that were the case, this wouldn?t be an advertorial. But since this piece was written by a Google employee, putting it in the advertorial category seems pretty safe.

Why Google Wants Advertorials To Block Links

Google?s search quality team ? which tries to protect listings against spam and irrelevant content ? doesn?t really care about that visible disclosure. Rather, its concerned about advertorials because they can be a way for people to buy links, which in turn might up being considered a ?vote? that helps the page getting the link to rank better in Google (see also?Links: The Broken ?Ballot Box? Used By Google Bing).

If the links are prevented by passing credit ? typically by tagging them with a bit of code known as the nofollow attribute ? then Google?s search team isn?t worried about advertorials. So that second arrow in the screenshot above is important. If that link is passing credit to Google, then Google is violating its own policies against buying links.

Google Buys Links

It apparently is passing credit. The page is listed (along with others) in Google, so Google?s seeing the links ? and there?s no apparent blocking associated with it. Similarly, this page has a direct link that passes credit to Google Analytics, as well as the AdWords Help Center.

Meanwhile, this page has links that arguably might have helped Google content rank better for generic terms like ?driving directions? and ?coupons,? as you can see:

Put your business online today at no cost with Google Places - The Globe and Mail

Well, that is if the links still worked. The driving directions link leads to a now-broken page at Google Maps. The other link is still valid, pointing to a help page about Google Places.

It?s unlikely Google was intentionally trying to rank that help page better for ?coupons? with this advertorial, but that will be beside the point. Google should follow its own rules.

Chromebooks Get Paid Links

The other example Wall points at is over at Edutopia, the non-profit education group backed by Star Wars creator George Lucas. The group has at least two pages with a notation saying they?re ?part of a series sponsored by Chromebooks,? as you can see below, from one of the pages about using Google Hangouts:

Using Google Hangouts for Teacher Development | Edutopia-1

While other links in the article have a nofollow attribute attached to them, this link does not. In fact, the link even carries tracking codes, making it clear that someone at Google wanted to know if this link was driving traffic to them:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/education/devices/?utm_source=edutopiautm_medium=onlineutm_campaign=northam-edu-2013-chromeos-pm-online-blog-edutopia

The article itself perhaps isn?t considered an advertorial in that it wasn?t written by a Google employee, as the first arrow below points out. But it?s clearly content that happening because Google is doing more than a general ad buy.

That combined with direct links to Google products like Chromebooks or the Hangouts plug-in page the second arrow below points to probably violates Google?s guidelines on paid links:

Using Google Hangouts for Teacher Development | Edutopia-2

Again, I doubt the intent was by Google to actually sponsor these posts in hopes of buying links. I certainly don?t think Edutopia believed it was selling links or trying to do anything against Google?s guidelines (I?ve done a couple free consulting calls over the years on general SEO issues to help the group, and it?s a nice collection of people trying to help educators).

Google Largely Ignores Intent, Punishes For Technicalities

But Google doesn?t have rules designed to assess intent. Instead, it focuses on techniques, much to my disappointment. As I wrote on this in the past:

I?d argue that the ?Be Fair? mantra means looking at intent, rather than tactics. Being fair means you don?t ban either a big company or a small company because they violated a technical guideline. You punish them because they intentionally worked to harm the user experience, in your opinion.

So what?s likely to happen here? The Globe Mail and Edutopia will probably get a PageRank reduction, which is largely meaningless. Potentially, they might not rank as well for some things because of this. But that?s really a?deterrent?to people who are trying to buy links from sites with high PageRank values, as those links are deemed more valuable. Since neither was likely intending to sell links, it?s not real loss for them. It?s a light penalty, because while Google doesn?t assess intent in deciding what?s right and wrong, it does take that into account when deciding how to punish.

Google Likely To Penalize Itself, Again

There?s an excellent chance Google?s going to have to penalize Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Chromebooks and Google Hangouts. When ?it doubt, it tends to be hard on itself, just like it penalized Chrome last year over a technical violation of its paid links policy. Chrome didn?t rank well for searches on ?Chrome? for two months.

Google?s also penalized Google Japan in 2009 for paid links,?its AdWords help area for cloaking in 2010, and the BeatThatQuote service it acquired in 2011 was penalized on day it was purchased over spam violations.

It Can Be Hard To Stay Safe (Oh Dear, Search Engine Land Has Paid Links!)

Each time these things happen, a common refrain can be heard. If Google itself can?t figure all this stuff out, how can publishers? And fair enough. It is confusing.

It?s been on my mind especially this week, as we had a new Digital Marketing Optimization Solution Center area go up on our Marketing Land sister-site. The area collects together our own Markting Land articles, so it?s not advertorial. IBM?s not sponsoring us to write about any topic or IBM in general. In fact, most of the articles where written before the deal even started.

We?re pretty sure we don?t have anything passing link credit outbound to IBM, but there are IBM white papers you can download. If someone uses a form on our own site, letting them fill out a form to download IBM content, is that page considered sponsored? Do we have to block links within our own site? The rules are unclear.

You can bet, a site that covers SEO best practices like ourselves ? and is heavily read by people at Google ? has nil desire to be selling links or violating Google?s guidelines. When we set-up our?e-Solution Spotlight?content area some years ago, I did a careful review of what the ad department was proposing, to ensure we weren?t passing along any link credit. To my horror, looking over at the area today, I can see that some of those links are passing credit, not tagged as nofollow as they should be.

Sigh. I guess we may potentially get penalized along with Google, not because there was any intent to do this but simply because someone screwed-up somewhere. Going forward, maybe we?ll just drop all our sponsored content pages from being in Google at all. That?s already what we were leaning toward this week, as we were doing the IBM review.

To Save The Links, We Had To Destroy Them?

I?ve felt Google has been losing its battle against paid links for ages. My post from 2007,?Time For Google To Give Up The Fight Against Paid Links?, remains relevant. From the conclusion:

Google?s supposed to be smart. Let it figure out if a link deserves credit or not, regardless of whether it is being sold, bartered, traded or editorially earned.

However, high-profile cases in 2011 involving JC Penney, online florists, Overstock Forbes did make me reconsider if somehow, Google was managing to turn the tide.

But no, I don?t think so. Maybe the attacks of the Penguin Update?last year and the insanity of people having to disavow links?is stopping some of the blatant and more crappy link buying. But some of it might be pushed further underground. Worse, the people who just don?t know any better or have no intent to do anything wrong ? including those at Google itself ? keep becoming?collateral?damage.

I?m at the point where I kind of feel like the only way to be safe with Google is to nofollow all your links, which damages the most important ranking signal that Google depends on.

Alternatively, it would be nice if Google came up with something other than the creaky, broken, leaky link system that it?s still depending on. How about spending more time interpreting some of those social signals as votes?

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Related Topics: Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Link Building: Paid Links | Top News


About The Author: Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Search Engine Land. He?s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/6QEmoPz_Uq4/will-google-penalize-chromebooks-advertorials-149452

Source: http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/will-google-penalize-chromebooks-google-analytics-adwords-google-for-using-advertorials/

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Kerry takes case on Syria to Europe, Mideast

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry is embarking on his first official overseas voyage, bringing new ideas to capitals in Europe and the Middle East on how to end nearly two years of brutal violence in Syria.

Kerry leaves Washington on Sunday on a grueling nine-nation, 10-day trip that will bring him to America's traditional western European allies of Britain, Germany, France and Italy along with Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In addition to Syria, he will focus on conflicts in Mali and Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear program.

Kerry has said he is eager to discuss new ways of convincing Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down and usher in a democratic transition in the country that has been wracked by increasing violence that has killed at least 70,000 people. He has not offered details of his ideas but officials say they revolve around increasing pressure on Assad and his inner circle.

Kerry begins his trip in London where he will see senior British officials on a range of issues, from Afghanistan to the status of the Falkland Islands, over which Britain is in a major dispute with Argentina.

He then travels to Germany to discuss trans-Atlantic issues with German youth in Berlin, where he spent time as a child as the son of an American diplomat posted to the divided Cold War city. He will also meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the German capital.

In Paris, Kerry will discuss France's ongoing intervention in Mali. And in Rome, he'll attend a meeting with Syrian opposition leaders.

U.S. officials have said the trip will be primarily a "listening tour" when it comes to Syria and won't result in immediate shifts in U.S. policy that has until now stayed clear of military support for the rebels fighting Assad.

Despite the numerous Middle East stops. Kerry will not travel to Israel or the Palestinian territories. He will wait to visit them when he accompanies President Barack Obama there in March.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-takes-case-syria-europe-mideast-081440189.html

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How to bind Chrome with Google Reader?

This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for enthusiasts and power users of the Android operating system. It's 100% free, no registration required.

Got a question about the site itself? meta is the place to talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, etc.

about ???? faq ? ? meta ?

Source: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/40215/how-to-bind-chrome-with-google-reader

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Syrian Opposition Pulls Out of International Talks (Voice Of America)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/286901085?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Study reveals new clues to Epstein-Barr virus

Friday, February 22, 2013

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) affects more than 90 percent of the population worldwide and was the first human virus found to be associated with cancer. Now, researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have broadened the understanding of this widespread infection with their discovery of a second B-cell attachment receptor for EBV.

The new findings, which currently appear on-line in Cell Reports, reinforce current directions being taken in the development of a vaccine to guard against EBV, and raise important new questions regarding the virus's possible relationship to malaria and to autoimmune diseases.

"Our discovery that CD35 is an attachment receptor for EBV helps explain several previously unsolved observations," explains the study's senior author Joyce Fingeroth, MD, a member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

First discovered in the early 1960s, EBV is one of eight viruses in the human herpesvirus family. The virus affects nine out of 10 people at some point in their lifetimes. Infections in early childhood often cause no disease symptoms, but people infected during adolescence or young adulthood may develop infectious mononucleosis. EBV is also associated with several types of cancer, including Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and has been linked to certain autoimmune disorders.

"EBV was the first human virus that was discovered to be a tumor virus," explains Fingeroth. "In fact, individuals who have had infectious mononucleosis have a four times increased risk of developing Hodgkin's disease." After the initial infection, the EBV virus remains in a person's body for life.

To gain entry, viruses must first attach to their host cells. For herpesviruses, receptors on the viral envelope become connected to complementary receptors on the cell membrane. In the case of EBV, the virus gains access to the immune system by attaching to primary B cells.

Nearly 30 years ago, Fingeroth and her colleagues discovered that this attachment occurs via the CD21 protein, which until now was the only known B cell attachment receptor for EBV. The recent finding that B cells from a patient lacking CD21 can be infected and immortalized by EBV had indicated that an alternative attachment receptor must exist. The identification of this second receptor -- CD35 -- by Fingeroth's team, led by first author Javier Ogembo, PhD, of BIDMC and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, not only underscores an important finding regarding primary infection but also underscores the importance of EBVgp350/220, (the virus protein that has been found to bind to both attachment receptors) for the development of a vaccine against EBV.

"The EBV glycoprotein gp350/220 is the most abundant surface glycoprotein on the virus," notes Fingeroth, adding that these results further suggest the virus fusion apparatus is the same for both receptors. "An EBV vaccine might be able to prevent infection or, alternatively, greatly reduce a person's risk of developing infectious mononucleosis and EBV-associated cancers, without necessarily preventing the EBV infection itself."

Interestingly, she adds, whereas a human has now been identified to be lacking the CD21 receptor, no persons are known to lack CD35.

"CD35 is a latecomer in evolution and in its current form, exists only in humans," says Fingeroth. "We know that it is often targeted in autoimmune diseases and was recently identified as a malaria receptor. Our new discovery may, therefore, reveal new avenues for the exploration of unexplained links between EBV, autoimmune diseases, malaria and cancer."

###

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: http://www.bidmc.harvard.edu

Thanks to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126972/Study_reveals_new_clues_to_Epstein_Barr_virus

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Microsoft joins list of companies recently hacked

(AP) ? Microsoft has joined the list of prominent technology companies confirming they have been hit by a recent computer hacking attack.

In a blog posting Friday, Microsoft said it had found no evidence that any customer data had been heisted.

Microsoft Corp. gave few other details about the break-in, except to say that was it similar to a hacking attack that online social networking leader Facebook Inc. disclosed last week. Facebook had said its investigation had discovered other companies had been hacked, but didn't identify the other victims.

Like Facebook, Microsoft says it is still investigating how malicious software was planted on what it said were a small number of its computers.

Online messaging service Twitter also recently disclosed that hackers may have stolen information about 250,000 of its users.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-22-Microsoft-Hacked/id-253c8ab4ed784c5da999c5c2f55cac82

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Order Bread-Free Items from Panera Bread's Secret Menu

Order Bread-Free Items from Panera Bread's Secret MenuIf you're cutting carbs or avoiding gluten, you don't have to avoid bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread. The company has a secret menu with items that don't include bread or flour?but you have to ask for that hidden menu.

Hidden menus at restaurant chains are unique and intriguing, if not all that "secret.". Panera's even published six dishes you can get at the cafe if you ask for them: two power breakfast egg bowls, two salads, a chicken hummus bowl, and a steak lettuce wrap. You won't find these on the menu board, but now you've got expanded options at Panera.

Access into Panera's hidden menu | Panera Bread via NPR

Photo remixed from an original by Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/bvHB9zfV3nU/order-bread+free-items-from-panera-breads-secret-menu

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Saturday, February 23, 2013

Fruit flies force their young to drink alcohol for their own good

Feb. 22, 2013 ? The fruit fly study adds to the evidence "that using toxins in the environment to medicate offspring may be common across the animal kingdom," says biologist Todd Schlenke.

When fruit flies sense parasitic wasps in their environment, they lay their eggs in an alcohol-soaked environment, essentially forcing their larvae to consume booze as a drug to combat the deadly wasps.

The discovery by biologists at Emory University is being published in the journal Science on February 22.

"The adult flies actually anticipate an infection risk to their children, and then they medicate them by depositing them in alcohol," says Todd Schlenke, the evolutionary geneticist whose lab did the research. "We found that this medicating behavior was shared by diverse fly species, adding to the evidence that using toxins in the environment to medicate offspring may be common across the animal kingdom."

Adult fruit flies detect the wasps by sight, and appear to have much better vision than previously realized, he adds. "Our data indicate that the flies can visually distinguish the relatively small morphological differences between male and female wasps, and between different species of wasps."

The experiments were led by Balint Zacsoh, who recently graduated from Emory with a degree in biology and still works in the Schlenke lab. The team also included Emory graduate student Zachary Lynch and postdoc Nathan Mortimer.

The larvae of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, eat the rot, or fungi and bacteria, that grows on overripe, fermenting fruit. They have evolved a certain amount of resistance to the toxic effects of the alcohol levels in their natural habitat, which can range up to 15 percent.

Tiny, endoparasitoid wasps are major killers of fruit flies. The wasps inject their eggs inside the fruit fly larvae, along with venom that aims to suppress their hosts' cellular immune response. If the flies fail to kill the wasp egg, a wasp larva hatches inside the fruit fly larva and begins to eat its host from the inside out.

Last year, the Schlenke lab published a study showing how fruit fly larvae infected with wasps prefer to eat food high in alcohol. This behavior greatly improves the survival rate of the fruit flies because they have evolved high tolerance of the toxic effects of the alcohol, but the wasps have not.

"The fruit fly larvae raise their blood alcohol levels, so that the wasps living in their blood will suffer," Schlenke says. "When you think of an immune system, you usually think of blood cells and immune proteins, but behavior can also be a big part of an organism's immune defense."

For the latest study, the researchers asked whether the fruit fly parents could sense when their children were at risk for infection, and whether they then sought out alcohol to prophylactically medicate them.

Adult female fruit flies were released in one mesh cage with parasitic wasps and another mesh cage with no wasps. Both cages had two petri dishes containing yeast, the nourishment for lab-raised fruit flies and their larvae. The yeast in one of the petri dishes was mixed with 6 percent alcohol, while the yeast in the other dish was alcohol free. After 24 hours, the petri dishes were removed and the researchers counted the eggs that the fruit flies had laid.

The results were dramatic. In the mesh cage with parasitic wasps, 90 percent of the eggs laid were in the dish containing alcohol. In the cage with no wasps, only 40 percent of the eggs were in the alcohol dish.

"The fruit flies clearly change their reproductive behavior when the wasps are present," Schlenke says. "The alcohol is slightly toxic to the fruit flies as well, but the wasps are a bigger danger than the alcohol."

The fly strains used in the experiments have been bred in the lab for decades. "The flies that we work with have not seen wasps in their lives before, and neither have their ancestors going back hundreds of generations," Schlenke says. "And yet, the flies still recognize these wasps as a danger when they are put in a cage with them."

Further experiments showed that the flies are extremely discerning about differences in the wasps. They preferred to lay their eggs in alcohol when female wasps were present, but not if only male wasps were in the cage.

Theorizing that the flies were reacting to pheromones, the researchers conducted experiments using two groups of mutated fruit flies. One group lacked the ability to smell, and another group lacked sight. The flies unable to smell, however, still preferred to lay their eggs in alcohol when female wasps were present. The blind flies did not make the distinction, choosing the non-alcohol food for their offspring, even in the presence of female wasps.

"This result was a surprise to me," Schlenke says. "I thought the flies were probably using olfaction to sense the female wasps. The small, compound eyes of flies are believed to be more geared to detecting motion than high-resolution images."

The only obvious visual differences between the female and male wasps, he adds, is that the males have longer antennae, slightly smaller bodies, and lack an ovipositor.

Further experimentation showed that the fruit flies can distinguish different species of wasps, and will only choose the alcohol food in response to wasp species that infect larvae, not fly pupae. "Fly larvae usually leave the food before they pupate," Schlenke explains, "so there is likely little benefit to laying eggs at alcoholic sites when pupal parasites are present."

The researchers also connected the exposure to female parasitic wasps to changes in a fruit fly neuropeptide.

Stress, and the resulting reduced level of neuropeptide F, or NPF, has previously been associated with alcohol-seeking behavior in fruit flies. Similarly, levels of a homologous neuropeptide in humans, NPY, is associated with alcoholism.

"We found that when a fruit fly is exposed to female parasitic wasps, this exposure reduces the level of NPF in the fly brain, causing the fly to seek out alcoholic sites for oviposition," Schlenke says. "Furthermore, the alcohol-seeking behavior appears to remain for the duration of the fly's life, even when the parasitic wasps are no longer present, an example of long-term memory."

Finally, Drosophila melanogaster is not unique in using this offspring medication behavior. "We tested a number of fly species," Schlenke says, "and found that each fly species that uses rotting fruit for food mounts this immune behavior against parasitic wasps. Medication may be far more common in nature than we previously thought."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Emory Health Sciences. The original article was written by Carol Clark.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal References:

  1. B. Z. Kacsoh, Z. R. Lynch, N. T. Mortimer, T. A. Schlenke. Fruit Flies Medicate Offspring After Seeing Parasites. Science, 2013; 339 (6122): 947 DOI: 10.1126/science.1229625
  2. Neil?F. Milan, Balint?Z. Kacsoh, Todd?A. Schlenke. Alcohol Consumption as Self-Medication against Blood-Borne Parasites in the Fruit Fly. Current Biology, 2012; 22 (6): 488 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.01.045

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/553YyOM3vUk/130222102958.htm

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It's the QBs, not the scout

John ElwayAP

Last year?s draft class of quarterbacks was a unique one, with eight rookies starting at some point in the season, and more than half of them playing well.

But according to Broncos executive John Elway, the rising tide of young quarterbacks is a function of improved play, rather than improved scouting.

Asked if the improved batting average on picking quarterbacks was because the league had learned something, Elway replied simply: ?I think quarterbacks are getting better. . . . We?re getting guys that are much better prepared.?

With the proliferation of 7-on-7 leagues at the high school level (and younger), to the individual instruction most draftable quarterbacks are getting now, there?s a higher level of training that passers are getting, which is raising the bar.

That doesn?t mean teams aren?t going to miss with this year?s crop, especially in a class where many personnel types are talking about the holes in their games, but the floor has been raised.

Of course, Elway still wants to see the intangibles in any passer he?s considering. He offered input to the league on the new personality test that was created to supplement the Wonderlic.

He said he was asked what he wanted to see measured, and he told the test-makers he?d wanted to see if they could gauge competitiveness.

Granted, he hasn?t seen the test to see how that manifested itself, and it seems no one has.

But as years pass, that too will be taught to the quarterbacks coming in, extending the cycle of preparedness.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/22/john-elway-nfls-not-better-at-finding-qbs-qbs-are-better/related/

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Friday, February 22, 2013

Vintage London Transport Museum posters

About this site

Designer Daily is a place for designers to find inspiration, resources, and thoughts on design. It is maintained by Mirko Humbert, a Swiss graphic and web designer who lives and work in the South of China.

The best way to stay up-to-date is to subscribe to the RSS feed for free. You can also connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest.

Guest articles are also welcome on Designer Daily, just contact us if you want to write a post or two.

Source: http://www.designer-daily.com/vintage-london-transport-museum-posters-31911

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Gadget Cover Implement London Train Advertising Campaign With Transport Media

(PRWEB UK) 21 February 2013

Transport Media have orchestrated an advertising campaign for insurance company Gadget Cover, broadcasting their brand across train car panels in the English capital of London. The adverts will be present for a fortnight, offering the public a promotional code that saves them 10% and also gives them one month free.

By directing their marketing strategy at the metropolitan region of London, Gadget Cover are exposing themselves to a portion of the nation who are likely to be in possession of multiple electronic devices. Transport Media?s experience with the industry enables the brand to maximise their visual potential through a tactical selection of format and location, as train users are more likely to fall within the ABC1 demographic, with commuters often using this form of transport as a site within which to operate their laptops, tablets, mp3 players and mobile phones ? all of which can be insured by Gadget Cover.

Designed by Transport Media?s in-house production team, the advert features photographic images presenting the array of gadgets which can be insured by the company, underscored by the Gadget Cover logo and the web address. A comparison with other reputable brands highlights the competitive pricing on offer, followed by a bullet point list of benefits to encourage the public towards http://www.Gadget-Cover.com. A promotional code is featured in a cobalt blue circle, drawing attention to the offer in order to further entice onlookers.????

Gadget Cover, part of Supercover Insurance, provide insurance cover for gadgets ? including mobile phones, cameras laptops, iPods, televisions, and more. The brand intends to provide comprehensive risk management solutions for the public?s electronic possessions, striving for affordable prices and a service based on integrity and honesty.


Source: http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/2/prweb10454962.htm

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YouTube data now part of Billboard Hot 100 chart

NEW YORK (AP) ? Viral videos are hits on the Web, and now they can help propel a song to the top of the Billboard charts.

Billboard has announced that U.S. YouTube data is now one of the factors when ranking Hot 100 songs and songs on its other charts.

The new rule went into effect this week, with the viral-video hit "Harlem Shake" debuting at No. 1. Other factors include radio airplay, digital download sales, physical single sales, on-demand audio streaming and online radio streaming. Billboard's new rule incorporates all official videos on YouTube, including Vevo.

"Harlem Shake" by Brooklyn producer Baauer features few lyrics. The video has a heavy dance-flavored beat. It became a viral success thanks to hundreds of YouTube videos of people dancing to the song.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/youtube-data-now-part-billboard-hot-100-chart-173313743.html

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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Bloomberg Endorses Healy for Mayor of Jersey City

Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in on a contentious political race across the Hudson River Thursday and endorsed the incumbent mayor of Jersey City for re-election.

?America needs mayors like Jerramiah Healy and he has earned another four years to keep the progress going in Jersey City,? Bloomberg said in a statement.

Healy was one of the original 17 members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition started by Bloomberg and the mayor of Boston in 2006. The two have appeared together at events against illegal gun trafficking since, and Bloomberg held a fundraiser at his home for Healy?s last race in 2009.

Bloomberg also praised Healy as a ?thoughtful leader? on economic development and the environment in his endorsement.

?Mayor Bloomberg?s internationally recognized leadership of New York City has helped advance our metropolitan area and I am proud to have his endorsement,? Healy said.

In another connection, Bloomberg?s late mother, Charlotte, was born in Jersey City and graduated from high school there in 1925.

Jersey City?s non-partisan mayoral race has become one of the marquee political contests in New Jersey this year. Healy?s main challenger, city Councilman Steven Fulop, has mounted a serious contest in the race, in part, by courting residents in the city?s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.

Fulop, a former Goldman Sachs worker and Marine, had $566,300 in cash on hand for the race and raised $108,700 during the last three months of 2012, according to his most recent campaign filing.

Healy was first elected in a special election in 2004 and has since served two full terms. He had $306,500 cash on hand and had raised $233,700 during the last months of 2012.

The race will be held in New Jersey?s second largest city on May 14.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/02/21/bloomberg-endorses-healy-for-mayor-of-jersey-city/?mod=WSJBlog

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Justice Department Probing JPMorgan Over Bear Stearns Mortgage Products

By Karen Freifeld and Aruna Viswanatha

(Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating JPMorgan Chase & Co over allegations that Bear Stearns provided misleading information about its mortgage products during the lead-up to the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in a 2008 fire sale encouraged by the government, and has pushed back against various government suits that have sought to hold JPMorgan accountable for the failed investment bank's alleged mortgage-related misconduct.

In this investigation, civil lawyers in the Justice Department are looking into whether Bear Stearns altered due diligence information that third parties provided about the quality of mortgage loans packaged into securities, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the probe.

The investigation, which is in early stages, shows that enforcement authorities are still actively building cases amid criticism that institutions have not adequately been held to account for their role in causing the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, declined to comment. DOJ spokeswoman Adora Andy also declined to comment.

The Justice Department last year issued more than a dozen civil subpoenas to top financial institutions as part of an inquiry into the packaging and sale of home loans.

Pending inquiries at the Justice Department are largely an outgrowth of a state-federal initiative known as the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, which President Barack Obama announced during his 2012 State of the Union speech.

One of the co-chairs of the group, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, already sued JPMorgan for fraud over Bear Stearns' packaging and sale of mortgage securities in the run up to the financial crisis.

It is unclear whether the recent Justice Department investigation into JPMorgan will result in enforcement action or might merge with mortgage-related probes by other agencies.

In a sign of how important the department appears to view these cases, the JPMorgan inquiry involves lawyers close to acting associate attorney general Tony West, according to people familiar with the matter.

West led the department's civil division until last February when he was promoted to his current post as the agency's third in command.

In another sign U.S. authorities are actively pursuing mortgage-related inquiries, the inspector general's office of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is hosting a training session this week with members of the RMBS working group, including federal prosecutors, members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, special agents and others, a person familiar with the training said. The group has held several similar sessions in the past year, the person said.

PRIVATE SUITS

The DOJ inquiry into the due diligence performed for Bear Stearns tracks accusations detailed in private lawsuits against the bank.

Bear Stearns hired Mortgage Data Management Corp to review a sample of loans in a 2006 mortgage securitization, according to a case filed against JPMorgan last year by bond insurer MBIA Inc .

Reviewers concluded that around one-third of the loans had serious credit and compliance problems, the lawsuit said.

But Bear Stearns altered the electronic spreadsheets to conceal the problems, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court.

Bear Stearns removed 50 columns of information from the spreadsheet that showed the issues and then sent the altered report to MBIA, the lawsuit said.

In its answer to the MBIA complaint, JPMorgan denied the allegations that it had altered the spreadsheets. That case is pending.

LATEST LEGAL HEADACHE

JPMorgan has recently been hit by a wave of lawsuits over the conduct of Bear Stearns that appear to have some overlap.

New York's case, filed in October, accuses Bear Stearns of causing some $22.5 billion in losses to investors of mortgage-backed securities by failing to ensure the quality of the underlying loans.

In December, the U.S. credit union regulator sued the bank over $3.6 billion in securities sold by Bear Stearns.

And in November, JPMorgan paid $296.9 million to settle a case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that accused Bear of failing to disclose it had arranged discounted cash settlements with originators that left investors stuck with problem loans. The SEC also accused JPMorgan itself of overstating the quality of home loans that backed a $1.8 billion residential mortgage-backed securities offering it underwrote in 2006.

The bank's chief executive Jamie Dimon has said the bank is continuing to pay the price for doing "a favor" for the Federal Reserve in agreeing to rescue Bear Stearns.

The inquires are the latest legal headache for JPMorgan, which also faces separate investigations from a trading loss of $6.2 billion that sprung from a botched hedging strategy carried out in its London office, and inquiries into whether its traders manipulated benchmark interest rates.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld in New York and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Tim Dobbyn)

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/justice-department-jp-morgan_n_2728993.html

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Google's stock price breaks $800 for 1st time

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, a man raises his hand during at Google offices. Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2013, amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap steadily higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the increasingly important mobile device market. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, a man raises his hand during at Google offices. Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2013, amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap steadily higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the increasingly important mobile device market. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap steadily higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the increasingly important mobile device market.

The milestone comes more than five years after Google's shares initially hit $700. Not long after breaking that barrier in October 2007, the economy collapsed into the worst recession since World War II and Google's stock tumbled into a prolonged malaise that eventually led to a change in leadership.

Besides enriching Google's employees and other shareholders, the company's resurgent stock is an implicit endorsement of co-founder Larry Page. He replaced his managerial mentor, Eric Schmidt, as CEO in April 2011. Google's stock has risen by about 35 percent since Page took over. By contrast, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index has climbed by 15 percent over the same stretch. Most of Google's gains have occurred in the past seven months.

In morning trading, Google's stock was at $801.99, up 1.2 percent, or $9.10.

The significance of crossing the $800 threshold is largely symbolic. If Google had its way, the stock wouldn't even be priced near these levels. The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., had hoped to split its stock last year in a move that would have at least temporarily halved the trading price by doubling the total number of outstanding shares. But the proposed stock split was put on hold until Google resolves a shareholder lawsuit alleging that the stock split unfairly cedes too much power to Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin. Page and Brin have been the company's largest shareholders since its inception. A trial on the lawsuit is scheduled to begin June 17 in a Delaware state court.

Assuming more investors wouldn't have bought the stock had it split, the company's market value probably wouldn't have changed from its current level of about $265 billion.

There is little dispute among analysts that Google appears well positioned for many years of prosperity. The reasons: Its Internet search engine remains the hub of the Web's biggest marketing network; its YouTube video site has established itself as an increasingly attractive advertising vehicle; and its free Android software is running on more than 600 million smartphones and tablet computers to create even more opportunities to sell ads.

The lower prices attached to mobiles ads have raised recurring concerns on Wall Street about the decline in the average rate paid for ads that run alongside Google's search results. The company, though, is trying to reverse the trend with upcoming changes to its ad system that will prod more marketers to buy mobile ads when they are creating campaigns for desktop and laptop computers.

Opinions about Google weren't as upbeat a few years ago. Although Google weathered the Great Recession better than most companies, its revenue growth slowed and its stock plummeted to as low as $247.30 near the end of 2008.

Things looked so bleak in 2009 that Google took the rare step of re-pricing stock options that had been doled out to its employees to give them a chance to make more money when the shares rebounded. The program allowed Google workers to swap their old stock options for new ones with an exercise price of about $308.

Even after the economy snapped out of the recession toward the end of 2009, Google's stock began to lag the rest of the market. Investors began to wonder if the company was losing its competitive age as it morphed from a hard-charging startup to giant organization with thousands of employees working in dozens of offices scattered around the world.

At the same time, Facebook was emerging as the Internet's fastest growing company in a meteoric rise. The social networking company had some people convinced it would eventually become a more important advertising vehicle than Google's search engine.

Perceptions have changed since Page became CEO. Under Page's leadership, Google has streamlined its decision-making and operations while closing dozens of services. It established its own toehold in social networking with the 2011 introduction of Google Plus.

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc. has lost much of the luster that made its initial public offering of stock one of the biggest in U.S. history. Since going public at $38, Facebook's stock has sunk 25 percent.

By contrast, Google's stock has never slipped below its August 2004 IPO price of $85.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-19-Google%20Stock/id-951b98bbcdbc4a1280be3f51ce2471f8

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