This year, for the first time since it was built in 1968, Madison Square Garden?s operation permit is up for renewal. Which means that the fate of New York?s most-loathed transit clusterfuck, Penn Station, is also suddenly up for discussion. This week, four architecture firms presented sparkling, well-rendered concepts for the Penn Station of the future. But are they doomed to repeat history?
Madison Square Garden sits on the site of what was once the largest railway station in the world: Pennsylvania Station, or ?Pennsy,? a grand neoclassical temple built in 1910 that was demolished in 1964, after only 53 years in existence. The public outrage that followed spurred the creation of New York?s Landmarks Preservation Commission, though it did nothing to change the building?s fate. ?If a giant pizza stand were proposed in an area zoned for such usage, and if studies showed acceptable traffic patterns and building densities,? critic Ada Louise Huxtable acidly said at the time, 'the pizza stand would be ?in the public interest,' even if the Parthenon itself stood on the chosen site.?
The proverbial giant pizza stand built in its place?a windowless entertainment mecca and a cramped, dank cavern of a transit hub?was, at the time, imagined as a very futuristic architectural solution to the problem of an aging city. Today, the most tangible problem is Penn Station?s size: the number of passengers that move through the cavernous space has tripled since the 1960s. It?s a void in a piece of urban fabric already dense with featureless facades and billboards. Sarah Goodyear points out that Vincent Scully Jr., the architectural historian, probably said it best: Through the old Penn Station, "one entered the city like a god." Through the new Penn Station, ?one scuttles in now like a rat."
So the opportunity to give it another shot?third time?s a charm, right??is tantalizing. To get the conversation started, the Municipal Arts Society invited four New York firms to imagine what Penn Station Part III could look like. Look is the crucial word here, though: the problems of Penn Station are more complex than what it looks like. So why are we talking about it in terms of aesthetics? Everyone loves an image of a glimmering, sunlit building of the future. But are beautiful renderings a sound basis upon which to solve a problem that involves civil engineering, transit, zoning, and economic development? Wasn?t that exactly what got us into our current situation?
New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman has the most sensible solution to the problem, of course. Rather than jumping into design, he suggested last week, why not renew Madison Square Garden?s operation permit for ten years? A decade would give us time to come up with a more thoughtful plan, involving stakeholders, experts on all fields, and case studies from other sites. And the architects, of course, who shouldn?t be vilified for their optimism. Such a plan makes sense?the question is whether we?re capable of the restraint needed to do something so sensible.
The editors of TIME, in 1950, didn?t think so. Writing about the second Penn Station, they described the city?s unique metabolism for architecture: ?Nothing makes a New Yorker happier than the sight of an old building rich in memories of the past; unless it is tearing the damn thing down and replacing it with something in chromium and plate glass, with no traditions at all." Check out the four proposals below.
Penn Station 3.0 by Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with Josh Sirefman, describe their formalist proposal as "a city within a city, a porous and light-filled civic structure filled with diverse new programs that reflect the hybridity of contemporary urban life." In scope, it's similar to the transit hub planned for San Francisco. Whether or not the sinuous curves and elastic structures support a well-design system is up for debate.
Proposal by SOM
"A central, transparent Ticketing Hall is placed at the center of the site, with dedicated vehicular drop-off and radial, pedestrian connections to the city surrounding it," explain the architects at SOM. "With all of these networks intersecting at Penn Station, its central hall would become the iconic gateway for nearly every visitor around the world... The design will fully exhaust its potential air rights but preserve the full four block ground-plane exclusively for Public use. The natural location for Madison Square Garden would be adjacent to, but not on top of, the major transit hub.?
Gotham Gateway by SHoP Architects
"SHoP imagines an expanded main hall of Penn Station as a bright, airy and easily navigable space that defines a center of a new destination district, Gotham Gateway," explain the architects. "In addition to striking public architecture, the project proposes significant security and rail capacity improvements that address major needs at the existing station." The pros? The core focus is connecting the High Line to the pedestrian areas around the station, which would improve access. The cons? The "tower-in-the-park" typology hasn't been very successful in New York thusfar. Public plazas in Midtown tend to end up as ghost towns.
Proposal by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture would relocate Penn Station to a pier on the Hudson River. Their proposal is the only to lay out the problem in terms of actual transit-users, which is a heartening thing to see. "The New Penn Station, including an eight-track high-speed rail expansion to the south, accommodates increased capacity and integrates community and traveler amenities, including a new 3 acre public park, retail complex, and 2 acre roof garden," the architects write.
Worldwide lecture tour touts point-of-care health carePublic release date: 30-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sheryl Weinstein 973-596-3436 New Jersey Institute of Technology
NJIT Distinguished Professor and electrical engineer Atam Dhawan hits the lecture trail again this summer as a distinguished speaker for an IEEE life sciences lecture series. His focus will be how "Point of Care Healthcare" can reduce illness, improve the quality of life, and stop spiraling healthcare costs. Dhawan, who will stop at conferences in Japan, Colombia and Croatia, tells audiences about the following.
If you aren't already using a "wearable" sensorwhether it's a watch that reads your blood pressure or a temperature strip for your child's foreheadyou soon will be. Such devices offer a fast, inexpensive and efficient mobile health information communication system plus used the right way they can become application-based smart decision support systems for patients and healthcare providers. They provide quality healthcare at affordable costs in developing economies and for developed economies, they can avoid or reduce extended hospitalization and in-patient costs to reduce sky-rocketing healthcare costs. For managing quality healthcare in epidemics and disaster situations, they could be critical in providing vital medical attention to those first, who need the most, he said.
Such devices, which rely on hidden electronic sensors, will soon thanks to newer and better software applications, communicate important information about your health to your smart phones. Such devices in tandem with video-conferencing would be available in rural areas where less trained individuals can provide good quality healthcare; and more, may soon even be able to replace physician office visits.
"Why wait to be seen in a medical office and then followed up with additional costly visits for tests at different places, if technology can enable instant conversations, send immediate information and more," Dhawan said. The savings can go beyond improving healthcare, to encompassing lower transportation costs and improving the medical infrastructure.
Big data is coming next in tandem with preventive healthcare. A burgeoning industry is developing around recoding and using big data, such as electronic health records and patient-centric health information from genome to physiom levels. "There are enormous amounts of data from sub-cellular to behavior levels that would allow preventive and personalized medicine practice and early therapeutic intervention before serious problems start," said Dhawan. "Why put the financial burden into treatment when it is hard to fight against low survival rates and maintaining good quality of life in critical diseases such as heart attack, hypertension, strokes, cancers, diabetes and more. Just put the money into preventive care."
Thanks to technology, using stem cells and regenerative medicine may not be too distant. From tissue engineering to organ implants, the technological challenge is to have the body regenerate healthy cells and tissues and accept implants for proper functions without other side effects and damages, he said. This is not the same challenge as a skin graft for cosmetic surgery to treat cancer cells. Rather such applications require tremendously complex biological systems modeling and analysis, which means that technology, must be able to exist in a clinical environment. However, that capability is fast approaching.
Surgical robotics will continue to make their mark. "Precision in invasive neural or cancer-related procedures is critical to improving prognosis and quality of life after the procedure," Dhawan noted. "Surgical robots are capable of delivering this goal."
What isn't yet available are better rehabilitation technologies and prosthetics. "It will be here soon, but we need more work in this area," Dhawan said. Life expectancies are improving worldwide but not the quality of life. "Technology must improve so we can better deal with affordable global quality healthcare, and how technology can compensate for accidental or pathological bodily damages such as loss of limbs and mobility, stroke, neuro-degenerative disease and more," he said. "There is a need for effective rehabilitation protocols to restore physical and mental health ranging from mobility to behavior functions and this need is expected to increase exponentially worldwide as people mature towards higher elderly populations, which will be more stressed and more accident-prone."
Quality global healthcare at an affordable cost is the key to a healthy society, added Dhawan. But it will not be achieved in the traditional practice of medicine today. Technological innovations with information and communication systems will take the driver's seat for providing quality healthcare across the globe. For security and health reasons, you will be asked to share information and lose privacy. And you will undergo a transformational and new relationship with your medical doctors. They will ask you to monitor your health and to learn and respect your risk assessment. In short, you will be held more accountable for maintaining your health. In exchange, however, physicians will finally be able to give you an early diagnosis so that you and they can avoid costly and far less attractive outcomes.
###
NJIT, New Jersey's science and technology university, enrolls more than 9,943 students pursuing bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 120 programs. The university consists of six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, College of Architecture and Design, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, College of Computing Sciences and Albert Dorman Honors College. U.S. News & World Report's 2012 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT in the top tier of national research universities. NJIT is internationally recognized for being at the edge in knowledge in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and e-learning. Many courses and certificate programs, as well as graduate degrees, are available online through the Division of Continuing Professional Education.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Worldwide lecture tour touts point-of-care health carePublic release date: 30-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sheryl Weinstein 973-596-3436 New Jersey Institute of Technology
NJIT Distinguished Professor and electrical engineer Atam Dhawan hits the lecture trail again this summer as a distinguished speaker for an IEEE life sciences lecture series. His focus will be how "Point of Care Healthcare" can reduce illness, improve the quality of life, and stop spiraling healthcare costs. Dhawan, who will stop at conferences in Japan, Colombia and Croatia, tells audiences about the following.
If you aren't already using a "wearable" sensorwhether it's a watch that reads your blood pressure or a temperature strip for your child's foreheadyou soon will be. Such devices offer a fast, inexpensive and efficient mobile health information communication system plus used the right way they can become application-based smart decision support systems for patients and healthcare providers. They provide quality healthcare at affordable costs in developing economies and for developed economies, they can avoid or reduce extended hospitalization and in-patient costs to reduce sky-rocketing healthcare costs. For managing quality healthcare in epidemics and disaster situations, they could be critical in providing vital medical attention to those first, who need the most, he said.
Such devices, which rely on hidden electronic sensors, will soon thanks to newer and better software applications, communicate important information about your health to your smart phones. Such devices in tandem with video-conferencing would be available in rural areas where less trained individuals can provide good quality healthcare; and more, may soon even be able to replace physician office visits.
"Why wait to be seen in a medical office and then followed up with additional costly visits for tests at different places, if technology can enable instant conversations, send immediate information and more," Dhawan said. The savings can go beyond improving healthcare, to encompassing lower transportation costs and improving the medical infrastructure.
Big data is coming next in tandem with preventive healthcare. A burgeoning industry is developing around recoding and using big data, such as electronic health records and patient-centric health information from genome to physiom levels. "There are enormous amounts of data from sub-cellular to behavior levels that would allow preventive and personalized medicine practice and early therapeutic intervention before serious problems start," said Dhawan. "Why put the financial burden into treatment when it is hard to fight against low survival rates and maintaining good quality of life in critical diseases such as heart attack, hypertension, strokes, cancers, diabetes and more. Just put the money into preventive care."
Thanks to technology, using stem cells and regenerative medicine may not be too distant. From tissue engineering to organ implants, the technological challenge is to have the body regenerate healthy cells and tissues and accept implants for proper functions without other side effects and damages, he said. This is not the same challenge as a skin graft for cosmetic surgery to treat cancer cells. Rather such applications require tremendously complex biological systems modeling and analysis, which means that technology, must be able to exist in a clinical environment. However, that capability is fast approaching.
Surgical robotics will continue to make their mark. "Precision in invasive neural or cancer-related procedures is critical to improving prognosis and quality of life after the procedure," Dhawan noted. "Surgical robots are capable of delivering this goal."
What isn't yet available are better rehabilitation technologies and prosthetics. "It will be here soon, but we need more work in this area," Dhawan said. Life expectancies are improving worldwide but not the quality of life. "Technology must improve so we can better deal with affordable global quality healthcare, and how technology can compensate for accidental or pathological bodily damages such as loss of limbs and mobility, stroke, neuro-degenerative disease and more," he said. "There is a need for effective rehabilitation protocols to restore physical and mental health ranging from mobility to behavior functions and this need is expected to increase exponentially worldwide as people mature towards higher elderly populations, which will be more stressed and more accident-prone."
Quality global healthcare at an affordable cost is the key to a healthy society, added Dhawan. But it will not be achieved in the traditional practice of medicine today. Technological innovations with information and communication systems will take the driver's seat for providing quality healthcare across the globe. For security and health reasons, you will be asked to share information and lose privacy. And you will undergo a transformational and new relationship with your medical doctors. They will ask you to monitor your health and to learn and respect your risk assessment. In short, you will be held more accountable for maintaining your health. In exchange, however, physicians will finally be able to give you an early diagnosis so that you and they can avoid costly and far less attractive outcomes.
###
NJIT, New Jersey's science and technology university, enrolls more than 9,943 students pursuing bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 120 programs. The university consists of six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, College of Architecture and Design, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, College of Computing Sciences and Albert Dorman Honors College. U.S. News & World Report's 2012 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT in the top tier of national research universities. NJIT is internationally recognized for being at the edge in knowledge in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and e-learning. Many courses and certificate programs, as well as graduate degrees, are available online through the Division of Continuing Professional Education.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Nasdaq has agreed to pay a $10 million penalty to settle federal civil charges after regulators said its systems and decisions disrupted Facebook's public stock offering last year.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that the penalty is the largest ever imposed against an exchange. Nasdaq also has had to pay $62 million in reimbursements to investment firms that lost money because of the problems.
Facebook launched its initial public offering on May 18, 2012 amid great fanfare. But computer glitches at Nasdaq delayed the start of trading and threw the launch into chaos. The technical problems kept many investors from buying shares that morning, selling them later in the day or even knowing whether their orders went through. Some said they were left holding shares they didn't want.
The SEC says a design flaw in Nasdaq's systems was to blame and Nasdaq officials then made a series of "ill-fated decisions."
Nasdaq neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.
Robert Greifeld, the CEO of the exchange's parent Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., called the settlement an "important step forward."
In a letter to customers made public Wednesday, Greifeld said Nasdaq has carefully reviewed the Facebook disruption over the past year and put new technical safeguards in place. The exchange has taken steps such as creating new executive positions within its technology division, and setting up teams to monitor and test trading systems, Greifeld said.
In addition to its namesake stock exchange, Nasdaq OMX also operates other exchanges and clearinghouses in the U.S. and abroad.
The Facebook IPO was widely anticipated and one of the largest in history. The social network was valued at more than $100 billion when it went public for $38 a share.
Nasdaq violated market rules by being poorly prepared for the launch, the SEC said. Exchanges have an obligation to ensure that their systems and contingency plans are strong enough to manage an IPO without disrupting the market.
The SEC said Nasdaq officials believed they had fixed the design flaw by removing a few lines of computer code and opted not to delay the start of trading in Facebook. But they failed to understand the root cause of the problem, the SEC said.
The $10 million penalty had been expected. Nasdaq said last month that it might have to pay that amount to resolve the matter with regulators.
In its administrative order issued Wednesday, the SEC also censured Nasdaq. Censure brings the possibility of a stiffer sanction if the alleged violation is repeated.
On Wednesday, Facebook shares fell 78 cents, or 3.2 percent, to close at $23.32
The tiniest bunny you will ever see is the size of a bacterium and a tough little fellow that has survived temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius.
The photograph to the right is a scanning electron microscope image of a bunny sculpture that is about one-hundredth of a millimeter tall. It was created in Japan by scientists and engineers out of a new light-sensitive material. This bunny was shaped and solidified with a laser and then baked.
The material could by used for bioelectronics ? as sensors and electrodes in the brain ? or in batteries, the scientists say. They describe their technique in Wednesday's issue of Optical Materials Express.
Tinycarbon electronics are very good conductors. As a bonus, when it comes to electrodes that are implanted in the body, carbon plays along better than traditional electronics like silicon. The hard part is shaping the fickle carbon compounds, some of which are liquid resins, into structures that will make them useful as electrodes or energy stores.
By sculpting a bunny and an assortment of other 3-D shapes including a flat platform, and tiny pyramids, the engineers showed that the stuff could be molded using existing technology, and remained stable, even if the end result is ... oddly shaped.
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
In this Thursday, May 9 2013, photo, two shoppers are reflected in the mirror at a shopping mall in Costa Mesa, Calif. The private Conference Board reports on consumer confidence for May on Tuesday, May 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
In this Thursday, May 9 2013, photo, two shoppers are reflected in the mirror at a shopping mall in Costa Mesa, Calif. The private Conference Board reports on consumer confidence for May on Tuesday, May 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Americans' confidence in the economy jumped in May to a five-year high, lifted by a better outlook for hiring, rising home prices and more optimism about business conditions. The increase suggests consumers may keep boosting economic growth this year.
The Conference Board, a New York-based private research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose in May to 76.2. That's up from a reading of 69.0 in April and the highest since February 2008.
The jump in confidence followed a separate report that showed the housing recovery is strengthening.
Home prices jumped 10.9 percent in March compared with a year ago, the most since April 2006, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller 20-city index. All 20 cities showed year-over-year gains.
The reports contributed to a strong day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average surged more than 177 points in early morning trading. Broader indexes also jumped.
Consumers' confidence in the economy is watched closely because their spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.
Conference Board economist Lynn Franco said Americans are more optimistic after worrying earlier in the year about higher taxes and federal spending cuts.
Higher home prices and stocks gains are making Americans feel wealthier. That has offset some of the pinch from the tax increase and kept consumers spending.
And the job market has improved steadily over the past six months. The economy has added an average of 208,000 jobs a month since November. That's well above the monthly average of 138,000 during the previous six months.
"U.S. consumers were decidedly more confident in May," said Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. She attributed the gain to "steady job growth, record high equity markets and rising home values."
The unemployment has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5 percent. Some of the decrease is because many people have given up looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are actively searching for a job.
The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the January-March quarter, up from a rate of just 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter. The fastest expansion in consumer spending in more than two years drove economic growth in the first quarter.
Many economists expect growth is slowing slightly in the current April-June quarter to a rate of between 2 percent and 2.5 percent. But there is hope among some economists that growth will strengthen in the second half of this year, boosted by the gains in housing and employment.
May 29, 2013 ? A new version of solar cells created by laboratories at Rice and Pennsylvania State universities could open the door to research on a new class of solar energy devices.
The photovoltaic devices created in a project led by Rice chemical engineer Rafael Verduzco and Penn State chemical engineer Enrique Gomez are based on block copolymers, self-assembling organic materials that arrange themselves into distinct layers. They easily outperform other cells with polymer compounds as active elements.
The discovery is detailed online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
While commercial, silicon-based solar cells turn about 20 percent of sunlight into electricity and experimental units top 25 percent, there's been an undercurrent of research into polymer-based cells that could greatly reduce the cost of solar energy, Verduzco said. The Rice/Penn State cells reach about 3 percent efficiency, but that's surprisingly better than other labs have achieved using polymer compounds.
"You need two components in a solar cell: one to carry (negative) electrons, the other to carry positive charges," Verduzco said. The imbalance between the two prompted by the input of energy -- sunlight -- creates useful current.
Since the mid-1980s, researchers have experimented with stacking or mixing polymer components with limited success, Verduzco said. Later polymer/fullerene mixtures topped 10 percent efficiency, but the fullerenes -- in this case, enhanced C-60 buckyballs -- are difficult to work with, he said.
The Rice lab discovered a block copolymer -- P3HT-b-PFTBT -- that separates into bands that are about 16 nanometers wide. More interesting to the researchers was the polymers' natural tendency to form bands perpendicular to the glass. The copolymer was created in the presence of a glass/indium tin oxide (ITO) top layer at a modest 165 degrees Celsius.
With a layer of aluminum on the other side of the device constructed by the Penn State team, the polymer bands stretched from the top to bottom electrodes and provided a clear path for electrons to flow.
"On paper, block copolymers are excellent candidates for organic solar cells, but no one has been able to get very good photovoltaic performance using block copolymers," Verduzco said. "We didn't give up on the idea of block copolymers because there's really only been a handful of these types of solar cells previously tested. We thought getting good performance using block copolymers was possible if we designed the right materials and fabricated the solar cells under the right conditions."
Mysteries remain, he said. "It's not clear why the copolymer organizes itself perpendicular to the electrodes," he said. "Our hypothesis is that both polymers want to be in contact with the ITO-coated glass. We think that forces this orientation, though we haven't proven it yet."
He said the researchers want to experiment with other block copolymers and learn to control their structures to increase the solar cell's ability to capture photons and turn them into electricity. Once they have achieved higher performance from the cells, the team will look at long-term use.
"We'll focus on performance first, because if we can't get it high enough, there's no reason to address some of the other challenges like stability," Verduzco said. Encapsulating a solar cell to keep air and water from degrading it is easy, he said, but protecting it from ultraviolet degradation over time is hard. "You have to expose it to sunlight. That you can't avoid."
Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Yen-Hao Lin and Kendall Smith; Penn State graduate student Changhe Guo and undergraduate Matthew Witman; Argonne National Laboratory researcher Joseph Strzalka; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory postdoctoral researcher Cheng Wang and staff scientist Alexander Hexemer; and Enrique Gomez, an assistant professor in the Penn State Department of Chemical Engineering. Verduzco is an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.
The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Welch Foundation, the Shell Center for Sustainability and the Louis and Peaches Owen Family Foundation supported the research.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas lawmakers sent Governor Rick Perry more than $1 billion in proposed business tax cuts shortly before the end of the biennial legislative session on Monday and the governor called a special session to address redistricting.
The tax-cut package - the final piece of which was approved by the Republican-majority legislature late on Sunday - includes an extension of a business franchise tax exemption for small businesses and a rate cut for businesses of all sizes.
Perry, a Republican, had called on lawmakers to pass tax relief for businesses. Thirty-five states are taking up tax reform in their current legislative sessions, according to a recent survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
On Monday, as lawmakers were wrapping up a session that began in January, Perry announced that a special session would begin Monday evening to consider adopting as permanent the interim redistricting plan ordered by a federal district court for elections for the Texas House and Senate as well as the U.S. House of Representatives.
"We can all be proud of the responsible steps made this session to invest in our citizens, fund water infrastructure, and build an even stronger foundation for the future of our economy and Texas families," Perry said in a statement. "However, there is still work to be done on behalf of the citizens of Texas."
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, a Republican, said passing the franchise tax proposal "sends a clear message that we are committed to sustaining the country's best climate for job creation and economic growth here in Texas."
The legislation removes inequities and lowers the tax rate for more than 800,000 businesses, Dewhurst said.
Dick Lavine, a senior fiscal analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, criticized the tax cuts, in particular a sales tax exemption for businesses buying equipment for research and development.
"As always, it didn't matter what the question was. The answer was, ?Let's cut taxes,'" said Lavine, whose organization advocates for low-income Texans. "It's well known that the best return on investment comes from pre-kindergarten through higher education. Who's going to be doing the research and development if we don't train our students?"
In addition to the business tax cuts, the legislature also approved about $300 million in electricity rebates.
The regular legislative session had a decidedly different tone than two years ago, when lawmakers faced a budget crunch and slashed spending.
This year, as the legislature convened, the state comptroller announced that lawmakers would have more revenue to spend than they did in the previous cycle thanks to higher-than-expected tax collections boosted by economic growth.
Texas lawmakers this year passed a two-year budget that restores cuts made to schools in 2011.
They also decided to ask voters this fall to approve $2 billion from the state's rainy-day fund to pay for a loan program for water infrastructure and reduced the number of standardized tests students would have to pass to graduate from high school.
Lawmakers did not pass a proposal pushed by Perry to ban late-term abortions, and conservative groups are asking the governor to add that and other anti-abortion measures to the special-session agenda.
The governor had called for the legislature to pass measures requiring drug tests for applicants for unemployment benefits - which lawmakers did pass - and for welfare, which they did not. The special session gives the author of the welfare measure, Republican Senator Jane Nelson, another shot at that proposal, she said on Monday.
A special session lasts no longer than 30 days and is limited to issues on the governor's agenda.
Before the end of the regular session, lawmakers sent the governor a bill that says students and teachers are allowed to say "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Hanukkah." They also sent him a sweet piece of legislation - a proposal to make the pecan pie the state pie of Texas.
(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Philip Barbara, Barbara Goldberg and Bill Trott)
This rate is 100 times faster than any changes in ocean acidity in the last 20 million years, making it unlikely that marine life can somehow adapt to the changes.
Thankfully wiki has citations too. Wiki link is dead, but theres this article http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/ocean-acidification/kolbert-text [nationalgeographic.com]
Anyway I did A lot of reading Nat Geo and other articles between video games. Also talking to people about and discussing it and getting their opinions.
When it comes to internet marketing, Nicole Cooper is a BEAST! When you click play on the video below, you?ll see Nicole Cooper break down one simple formula for generating cash money on the internet and you?ll discover?exactly how to get people to join YOUR business! Take notes young grasshopper.
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The federal appeals court in Denver is set to hear arguments Thursday on whether the Obama health-care law can compel business owners to violate 'sincerely held religious beliefs.'
By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / May 23, 2013
President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius leave a White House press briefing last year after the president announced the revamp of his contraception policy requiring religious institutions to fully pay for birth control.The legal challenges over religious freedom and the birth control coverage requirement in Obama?s health-care overhaul appear to be moving toward the US Supreme Court.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP/File
Enlarge
A federal appeals court in Denver is set to hear argument on Thursday in a lawsuit charging that the Obama administration?s requirement that employers provide contraceptive services in all mandated health plans violates religious liberty.
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The full 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled an hour-long argument session to allow lawyers for the family-owned Hobby Lobby Stores to argue their case that the contraception mandate violates sincerely held religious beliefs of the company owners.
The owners, the Green family, are evangelical Christians. The company already provides their 13,000 employees with health-care coverage, but it does not include certain kinds of birth control methods that are offensive to the Green?s religious beliefs. They particularly object to the provision of the so-called morning after pill, which they believe can be abortion-inducing.
The case is one of 59 lawsuits challenging the contraception mandate that are pending across the county, and one of a handful to reach the appellate level. Legal analysts expect potential future appeals to arrive at the US Supreme Court later this year.
Specifically at issue is whether the courts should issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of President Obama?s health-care reform law pending a full airing of the underlying religious liberty issue.
Appeals courts have split on the question, with three granting an injunction and three others refusing to block the new law.
The legal dispute is developing into a major confrontation pitting the scope of an individual?s ability to practice religious freedom against the Obama administration?s power to order employers to facilitate reproductive freedom for their female employees.?
Government lawyers defend the health-care regulations, saying that they do not violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or constitutional guarantees of freedom to follow one?s religion without government interference.
This is one of our core values at H.Bloom. It stems from another one of our values, which is to care deeply about our colleagues, and from the shared ambition to become as good as we can possibly be in this business. The only way to achieve this is to be direct with each other about areas of improvement. Otherwise, how will any of us know what to improve?
In my last two posts, I have written about the importance of practice, the formal training that we have set up, and shared the details of a specific management class that I led recently on data-driven decision-making. In this post, I want to walk through some of the projects our managers presented as part of the assignment from that class, and the direct feedback that I gave them so that they could work on the continued development of their skills.
After the training class, I gave the following assignment to our market managers and sales managers:
Identify a problem or opportunity in your market.
Analyze any available data about that problem or opportunity.
Use the evaluation of data to draw a conclusion.
Present your findings to the group.
The class participants could work on this assignment individually, or in teams, and they were given two weeks to complete the project. Here are four examples of what the participants presented, and how we used the presentations as an opportunity to give direct feedback on the skills they had learned.
Automate a Process
One of our market managers presented the need for a new piece of software that would automate the process of fulfilling same-day orders. Today, these orders are guided to completion in a relatively manual way. There is no question this process needs to be automated. However, as a three-year-old start-up, almost everything we do still needs to be automated. The presentation skipped over the data analysis and jumped right to the conclusion. While the conclusion was sound, the presentation missed the mark because of the lack of supporting data.
In our company, there is tremendous opportunity to derive competitive advantage by automating manual processes, but the trick is in deciding which processes to automate first. I gave this market manager direct feedback: First, when the assignment is data-driven decision-making, don?t forget the data! Second, and the important lesson in this interaction, was that because everything needs to be automated, the only way to determine what to do next is to compare the potential return of one project to that of another. With this filter, we work on the highest-value projects first, and eventually, we will get to everything. I asked this market manager to redo the presentation.
Buy Some Equipment
Another presentation, this time from a current SEED participant, suggested that we purchase a piece of equipment to deliver a particular corporate service in a more efficient manner. The numbers were sound: the presentation showed cost, a detailed potential return, and months to break-even. The return on investment was compelling, except for one other piece of data ? this new business, one we had just introduced, was not yet profitable. I suggested to the presenter that we should drive the business to profitability first ? which was only a couple of months away ? before investing further in the line. While the presentation analyzed data, I thought it missed the analysis of contextual data (in this case, the profit and loss of the business line itself). The presentation provided a good opportunity to share with this future market manager my philosophies on investing limited capital, introducing new lines of business, and investing in those businesses for scale and efficiency.
Eliminate Wasted Effort
Two sales managers presented a detailed analysis of our sales pipeline. They enumerated activities by account executive, conversion rate and closed deals. They conducted an in-depth survey with current account executives, and identified a situation in which our sales people were duplicating efforts by entering the same data into two different systems. They calculated the potential uplift in sales if this wasted effort were removed and concluded that our engineering team should build the required functionality. My reaction was not what they expected. In the process of presenting their findings, they highlighted the number of activities that our account executives complete on average per day. When I asked the sales managers if they thought it was conceivable that our account managers could do more activities per day, the answer was a resounding, ?Yes.?
In fact, these sales managers believed that our sales people could execute twice the number of activities per day even without implementing their suggestion. When I then asked them to compare the potential value of a) increasing the number of activities per account executive per day to b) removing the duplicative process, they saw that the former would provide a much larger return. My feedback to them was simple ? if the data is there, make sure to draw the most rewarding conclusion. As a result of the presentation, the sales managers met as a group and instituted a new minimum number of activities a day, supported by our incentive program, and that has now been introduced to our entire sales force.
Try a Loyalty Program
One of our most seasoned sales managers analyzed our corporate subscription business. She proposed the introduction of a customer loyalty program, whereby we would systematically deliver something extraordinary to our customers as a thank-you for their loyalty during the previous year. This program could do two things: 1) surprise and delight our customers and 2) help ensure that they continue their subscription. The team compared the cost of this program to the potential benefit and proposed a pilot program that would contain our costs while enabling us to see any positive results in just two months. I gave the sales manager my feedback: it was a great presentation; a thorough analysis of the data; and a thoughtful decision to propose a pilot program. As a result of the presentation, I approved the program, which is in process right now. We will be able to assess the results in a couple of months.
Bryan Burkhart is a founder of H.Bloom. You can follow him on Twitter.
May 23, 2013 ? Nearly two-thirds of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma -- a common tumor that forms in the nerve cells of children -- cannot be cured using tumor-killing cancer drugs. A study published by Cell Press in the May 23 issue of Chemistry & Biology reveals a new genomic approach to screen for compounds that could inhibit tumor growth by causing cancer cells to differentiate, or convert from immature cells to more specialized cell types. Using this screening method, the researchers identified a compound that causes neuroblastoma cells to differentiate, uncovering a promising new treatment strategy for this highly malignant pediatric cancer.
"New treatment approaches are very much needed for children with high-risk childhood cancers; that is, those that are metastatic at diagnosis and likely to recur," says senior study author Kimberly Stegmaier of the Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. "By focusing on an alternative strategy to treating neuroblastoma tumors, we identified a compound class that in early testing in neuroblastoma cells in the laboratory shows promise for treating children with this disease."
Beyond the standard approach of using drugs that kill tumor cells, another promising strategy is to identify compounds that promote differentiation, which causes tumor cells to stop dividing and growing. But the benefits of differentiation therapy had not been fully explored.
To address this need, Stegmaier and her team developed a method to screen small molecules for their ability to trigger differentiation in neuroblastoma cells. First, they treated these cells with drugs known to induce differentiation and looked for accompanying changes in the activity levels of genes. They found that 59 genes showed changes related to differentiation. Using this genetic signature for differentiation, they then screened nearly 2,000 small molecules and identified one compound that strongly promoted differentiation in neuroblastoma cells, especially when combined with a drug already approved to treat this type of cancer.
The newly identified compound works by selectively inhibiting a subset of gene-regulating proteins called histone deacetylases (HDACs). "This work supports the need to develop selective HDAC inhibitors for clinical application and, more broadly, illuminates the power of integrating signature-based screening with new approaches to chemical synthesis to provide novel biological insights into human disease," Stegmaier says.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? A day after she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, Lois Lerner has been replaced as director the Internal Revenue Service division that oversaw agents who targeted tea party groups.
Danny Werfel, the agency's new acting commissioner, told IRS employees in an email Thursday that he has selected a new acting head of the division.
Ken Corbin will be the acting director of the agency's exempt organizations division. Corbin is currently deputy director of submission processing in the wage and investment division.
A congressional aide said Lerner has been placed on administrative leave. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
Amid growing concerns about security threats from Syria and Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has greatly reduced planned defense budget cuts.
But officials remain worried that Israeli military capabilities will still be weakened.
"The big worry is that we'll have to reduce defense procurements and orders from defense industries," observed Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon.
Defense contractors "will be the first to get hurt," he said. "If the cut's not gradual over 3-4 years so that defense industries can prepare for it, they will collapse, causing great damage to the economy."
Israel is the most militarized state in the Middle East and the region's sole nuclear superpower, backed by the United States.
"Israel spends more on its military and intelligence establishments, in proportion to its total economy, than almost another nation," U.S. author and journalist Patrick Tyler observed in his 2012 book "Fortress Israel."
"The military alone receives more than 6 percent of annual gross domestic product."
This week, the government reduced a planned cut of $1.1 billion from a defense budget of $16.6 billion to $273 million.
Insiders say that with some innovative bookkeeping the effect of this will be minimal, as is often the case in a state where the military wields more clout than in most Western nations.
Most of the key defense programs are heavily funded by the United States, which provides Israel with $3.1 billion a year in military aid, plus untold billions more in grants, long-term loans and other fiscal measures.
The key programs of the moment, development and production of anti-missile systems, vital to defend Israeli cities from massive bombardment by Iran and its allies, are pretty much covered by U.S. support.
These systems range from the Arrow-3 high-altitude, counter-ballistic missile being developed by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Boeing Co. of the United States.
Another is David's Sling, a mid-range defense system being developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Raytheon Co. of the United States.
The air force is to start taking delivery by 2017 of 20 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, deemed the most advanced combat jet in the world, under a $2.76 billion contract.
Eventually the air force wants at least 75 of these jets, valued at $15 billion, to maintain Israel's regional military supremacy.
With defense cuts minimized, and with the $273 million the Defense Ministry will supposedly lose to be covered from Treasury reserves, the defense industry shouldn't encounter any immediate downturn in orders.
Increasingly dependent on export sales, it's centered on four major companies, IAI, Elbit Systems, Israel Military Industries and Rafael.
These are supported by dozens of small and mid-sized specialty firms.
Joseph Ackerman, Elbit's outgoing president and chief executive officer, says that in a rapidly changing market Israel's defense industry needs to consolidate because "there are no small companies anymore. It'll be a disaster if we don't do this."
Israel's defense establishment has resigned itself to some cuts, which are inevitable because of the need to boost social spending following nationwide protests over falling standards of living.
But it has long maintained that any significant cuts undermine the military's ability to meet the plethora of security threats the state faces and those that invariably arise with little warning.
One such phenomenon was the so-called Arab Spring, pro-democracy revolutions that toppled the longtime presidents of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia is 2001.
Israel's security policy was predicated on these Arab strongmen, particularly Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, keeping their militants in check.
With Mubarak's fall, Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel appeared threatened, and the Jewish state is having to build up defenses on its long calm southern border.
The 2-year-old rebellion against Syria's President Bashar Assad poses another, unpredictable security threat.
Israel's northern border with Syria had been quiet since 1973 because the Assad dynasty employed Lebanese proxies to threaten the Jewish state. But that arrangement's collapsing and Israel faces the prospect of a hard-line Islamist regime taking power in Damascus.
"The Ministry of Finance told the security cabinet that the security threats facing Israel have diminished," Globes, Israel's business daily, reported.
"The ministry ... believes that in preparing against these threats, the military has already invested sufficiently in recent years, allocating large resources" to counter Iran's nuclear program and other threats.
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) ? An 80-year-old Japanese extreme skier who climbed Mount Everest five years ago, but just missed becoming the oldest man to reach the summit, was back on the mountain Wednesday to make another attempt at the title.
Unfortunately for Yuichiro Miura, the 81-year-old Nepalese man who nabbed the record just before he could in 2008 is fast on his heels.
Miura on Wednesday was already in the "death zone," the steep, icy, oxygen-deficient area close to the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit. His rival, Min Bahadur Sherchan, from Nepal, was at the base camp preparing for his own attempt on the summit next week.
On his expedition's website, Miura explained his attempt to scale Everest at such an advanced age: "It is to challenge (my) own ultimate limit. It is to honor the great Mother Nature."
He said a successful climb would raise the bar for what is possible.
"And if the limit of age 80 is at the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest place on earth, one can never be happier," he said.
Miura reached the South Col, the jumping-off point for most final ascents, on Tuesday, according to his website, which also posted pictures of him eating hand-rolled sushi inside a tent.
"Miura is reported to be in good health and he and his team are aiming to reach the summit on Thursday morning," said Gyanendra Shrestha, a Nepalese mountaineering official at the base camp.
If Miura makes it to the top, he would capture the record. But it would only last a few days if Sherchan is able to follow him.
Miura's daughter, Emili Miura, said he "doesn't really care" about the rivalry. "He's doing it for his own challenge," she said.
The situation was not too different five years ago, when, at the age of 75, Miura sought to recapture the title of oldest man to summit the mountain. He had set the record in 2003 at age 70, but it was later broken twice by slightly older Japanese climbers.
He reached the summit on May 26, 2008, at the age of 75 years and 227 days, according to Guinness World Records. But the record eluded him because Sherchan had scaled the summit the day before, at the age of 76 years and 340 days.
Sherchan, a former Gurkha soldier in the British army, first began mountaineering in 1960 when he climbed Mount Dhaulagiri, the 8,167-meter (26,790-foot) high peak in Nepal, according to his grandson, Manoj Guachan. Always an adventurer, and unbowed by age, he walked the length of Nepal in 2003.
Sherchan and his team said Wednesday that they were prepared for their new climb, despite digestive problems he suffered several days ago.
"Our team leader has just arrived back at base camp and we are holding a team meeting on when exactly I will head up to the summit," Sherchan, who uses a hearing aid, said by telephone from the base camp. "I am fine and in good health. I am ready to take up the challenge. Our plan is to reach the summit within one week."
It takes three to four days for climbers to reach Camp 4 on South Col from base camp, and another day to reach the summit.
There are only a few windows of good weather during the climbing season in May for people to attempt the summit. That could favor Miura.
Conditions should be favorable Wednesday and Thursday, but they were expected to deteriorate after Friday, said Shrestha, the mountaineering official at base camp.
Sherchan's team is also facing financial difficulties. It hasn't received the financial help that the Nepal government announced it would provide them. Purna Chandra Bhattarai, chief of Nepal's mountaineering department, said the aid proposal was still under consideration.
Miura faced difficulties of his own.
He fractured his pelvis and left thigh bone in a 2009 skiing accident, and had an operation in January for an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, his fourth heart surgery since 2007, according to Emili Miura.
His daughter said Miura decided to go ahead with the expedition despite the surgery because he felt that at age 80, he was running out of time.
"If he was in his 60s, he probably would have waited for another year or two, but at the age of 80 he's not getting any younger. He has a strong determination that now is the time," she said in a phone interview.
On his ascent, Miura made a stop at the rarely used Camp 5 to take a break between the South Col and the summit. Almost all the climbers these days walk straight from Camp 4 to the summit.
Miura was well-known long before his late-in-life mountaineering pursuits.
He was a daredevil speed skier who skied down Everest's South Col in 1970, using a parachute to brake his descent. The feat was captured in the Oscar-winning 1975 documentary, "The Man Who Skied Down Everest."
In 1964, he briefly set a world speed skiing record in the Italian Alps, reaching 172 kilometers per hour (107 mph). He also skied down Mt. Fuji using parachutes.
It wasn't until Miura was 70, however, that he first climbed all the way to the summit of Everest. When he summited again at 75, he claimed to be the only man to accomplish the feat twice in his 70s. After that, he said he was determined to climb again at age 80.
Miura is accompanied on the expedition by his son Gota, a two-time Olympian skier. Gota Miura, 43, summited Everest in 2003 with his father, but had to turn back short of the summit in 2008 due to symptoms of high altitude cerebral edema.
___
Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report from Tokyo.
The Oklahoma tornado Monday was an EF5 ? the severest rating. But a tornado that hit the same area in 1999 had faster winds, and a 2004 Nebraska twister was almost twice as wide.
By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / May 21, 2013
A tornado moves past homes in Moore, Okla., on Monday. A monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 m.p.h.
Alonzo Adams/AP
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The National Weather Service has rated the tornado that struck Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon as an EF5, the highest rating with wind speeds estimated at more than 200 miles an hour.
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The event gives Moore the distinction of being the only city in the world to have taken a direct hit from an EF5 twister twice ? once in 1999 and again Monday. The new estimate, up from a preliminary estimate of EF4, brings to 59 the number of these chart-topping tornadoes to strike US since 1950, according to data gathered by the National Weather Services Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, Okla.
The wind strengths are estimates based on the extent of damage inflicted on different types of structures. With the exception of the weakest tornadoes, twisters tend to destroy any wind sensors placed in their paths. Researchers have been able to measure wind speeds higher in the funnel on a few tornadoes through other means. They clocked wind speeds in the twister that hit Moore in 1999 at 302 miles an hour ? the fastest wind speeds ever recorded on Earth.
Monday's tornado widened and narrowed along its path, notes Rick Smith, warning coordination meteorologist at the local National Weather Service Forecast office, also in Norman. But it reached its maximum width as it spun across Moore, leaving behind a path of destruction some 1.3 miles wide, he says.
The current record for widest tornado remains an EF4 twister that hit Hallam, Neb., in May 2004. At its most intense, it spanned nearly 2.5 miles.
Oklahoma turns out to be ground zero for tornadoes rated EF4 or EF5, according to the SPC, while Oklahoma City has had some 100 twisters cross its boundaries since 1896, with another 49 counting as near misses.
The tornadoes that have popped up over the past few days belie the relatively benign conditions that have existed throughout much of the past year, researchers say.
While April was the 13th warmest on record globally, it was the 23rd coolest for the continental US and the coolest for the lower 48 since April 1997, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This contributed to a very slow start to the 2013 tornado season. For the 12 months ending April 30, the US experienced 197 tornadoes rated EF1 or higher, according to data compiled by Harold Brooks, a tornado researcher at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman. That's 50 fewer twisters than the previous record low, which was set from June 1991 to May 1992.
And while severe weather in January and February led to more reports of tornadoes for each month than the 1991-2010 averages would suggest, March and April's tornado reports were well below the 30-year average.
But by mid May, the atmosphere, and severe thunderstorms, began to fire up. For the month through May 21, preliminary data gathered by the SPC indicate some 127 tornado reports around the US, but focused largely on the Plains and Midwest. This compares with 83 reports in April, 18 in March, 46 in February, and 64 in January. The total year to date is running well below the 2005-2011 average total of 718 reports through May 20.
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Public release date: 30-May-2013
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