'First bionic eye' retinal chip for blind

June 29, 2013 ? University Hospitals (UH) Eye Institute will be one of the first medical centers in the United States to offer the Argus? II Retinal Prosthesis System ("Argus II").

The Argus II is the first and only "bionic eye" to be approved in countries throughout the world, including the U.S. It is used to treat patients with late stage retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Argus II was developed by Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., located near Los Angeles.

In preparation for the launch of Argus II later this year, implanting centers, including UH, will soon begin to accept consultations for patients with RP. UH is one of a select number of medical centers in 12 major markets in the nation, and the only one in Cleveland and the state of Ohio, chosen by Second Sight to offer the Argus II, which received FDA approval earlier this year.

Argus II works by converting video images captured by a miniature camera, housed in the patient's glasses, into a series of small electrical pulses that are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes on the surface of the retina. These pulses are intended to stimulate the retina's remaining cells resulting in the corresponding perception of patterns of light in the brain. Patients then learn to interpret these visual patterns thereby regaining some visual function.

"This is a remarkable breakthrough," said Suber S. Huang, MD, MBA, Director, UH Eye Institute's Center for Retina and Macular Disease, who also served as the Independent Medical Safety Monitor for clinical trials of the system and gave the summary closing to the FDA Ophthalmic devices panel.

"The system offers a profound benefit for people who are blind from RP and who currently have no therapy available to them. Argus II allows patients to reclaim their independence and improve their lives."

RP is a rare inherited, degenerative eye disease that often results in profound vision loss to the level of bare light perception or no light perception. It affects nearly 100,000 Americans. Noted Cleveland businessman and professional sports owner Gordon Gund is blind from this disease.

"We are thrilled that several of the nation's top hospitals will be the first to offer Argus II to patients in the U.S.," said Brian Mech, Vice President of Business Development, Second Sight. "After an intensive and difficult selection process, these sites were chosen for their cutting-edge approach to medicine and unparalleled commitment to patient care. We are confident that RP patients seeking treatment at these centers will benefit greatly from the best-in-class services these sites provide."

Argus II had more than 20 years of work in the field, three clinical trials, more than $100 million in public investment by the National Eye Institute, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation, and an additional $100 million in private investment.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Rl1fuNyJzyA/130629164628.htm

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Discovery's 'Shark Week' Tops Itself: 11 New Episodes, Adds Late-Night Talk Show

By Jethro Nededog

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Discovery's annual "Shark Week" begins Sunday, August 4 and boasts its most new premiere hours this summer over its 26 year run.

This year, the cable network adds a late night show to the mix: "Shark After Dark." The show will air each evening of "Shark Week" with highlights from the days' programming and guests, including shark experts and shark attack survivors.

A highly watched event for Discovery, last year brought in 21.4 million viewers for the week and made it the No. 1 non-scripted cable network among the advertiser-coveted Adults 18-49 demographic.

Here's a rundown of this summer's new "Shark Week" episodes:

"Sharkpocalypse": Following a year of shark encounters closely followed by the media, the program examines the trend of sharks moving in closer to shorelines, and debates whether there is a connection between declining shark populations and the increase in shark attacks.

"Return of Jaws": Shark Cam is a robot submarine that is used to track sharks in a new and exciting way. Return of Jaws includes spectacular footage of Shark Cam following Great White Sharks living and hunting off the shores of Cape Cod. Footage of a 17-foot Great White is seen at close range over a five hour period as the shark hunts seal colonies, comes close to shore in less than four feet of water, and takes a chilling interest in one specific area.

"In Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives (WT)": Discovery brings SHARK WEEK viewers on a search for a massive killer great white shark responsible for a rash of fatalities off the coast of South Africa. One controversial scientist believes that the shark responsible could be Megalodon, a 60-foot relative of the great white that is one of the largest and most powerful predators in history. Our oceans remain 95% unexplored, and this massive prehistoric predator has always been shrouded in secrecy, but after a rash of newly discovered evidence, authorities are forced to investigate whether this predator, long thought to be extinct, could still be lurking in our deepest oceans.

"I Escaped Jaws": Program features yet another SHARK WEEK first as we utilize for the first time real shark attack footage captured by eyewitnesses. Viewers experience harrowing first-hand accounts from everyday people who stared into the jaws of a shark and survived. Some used their wits; some relied on experience, and all lived to share their chilling stories.

"Voodoo Sharks": A lesser-known shark "hot spot" is explored in Voodoo Sharks, where Bull Shark populations have moved beyond oceans and U.S. coasts to the bayous of Louisiana. Nicknamed ?Voodoo Sharks' by local shrimp fishermen, these Bull Sharks have the extraordinary ability to live in both salt and fresh water environments. They show up by the hundreds in the bayous of Louisiana and create more than just confusion for those who encounter them for the first time.

"Great White Serial Killer": Natural history producer Jeff Kurr returns to SHARK WEEK after 2011's Emmy?-nominated Ultimate Air Jaws and 2012's Air Jaws Apocalypse. In Great White Serial Killer, Kurr sets out to examine two fatal shark attacks near Vandenberg Air force base in California, using evidence found at both sites to try to determine if one shark was responsible for both attacks.

"Air Jaws: Beyond the Breach": Air Jaws programming has pushed and expanded our understanding of Great Whites sharks, becoming one of the iconic SHARK WEEK programs. In Air Jaws: Beyond the Breach, a documentary crew goes behind the scenes to see how Air Jaws has changed what we know about these incredible creatures, and gives viewers a sneak peek into the next Air Jaws special, Finding Colossus, which will air during SHARK WEEK 2014.

"Spawn of Jaws": Program follows a scientist on the brink of a breakthrough as he reveals the life cycle of the Great White Shark for the first time, including mating and pupping.

"The Great White Gauntlet (WT)": Program explores the dangers of abalone diving, which can be both lucrative and dangerous as it happens in one of the deadliest shark feeding grounds in the world - one that is regularly frequented by Great White Sharks.

"Sharks Behaving Badly (WT)": Program is a humorous look at fishermen, surfers, and bathers who have encountered sharks and lived to laugh about it. We'll take a close look at the multiple shark encounter videos on YouTube, using forensic analysis and other elements to demonstrate the best behaviors when encountering a shark.

"Top 10 Sharkdown": Program updates the international shark attack files for the 21st century, taking a closer look at the sharks you don't want to meet this summer -- and the ones you're most likely to encounter.

"Alien Monster Sharks": Program follows American and Japanese scientists as they descend into the deepest and darkest unexplored oceans on earth in search of some of the more incredible and bizarre sharks on the planet, from the Goblin shark to the elusive, giant Megamouth shark.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/discoverys-shark-week-tops-itself-11-episodes-adds-004654393.html

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Obama's ties to Mandela loom over S. Africa visit

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Inspired by Nelson Mandela's struggles in South Africa, a young Barack Obama joined campus protests in the U.S. against the racist rule that kept Mandela locked away in prison for nearly three decades.

Now a historic, barrier-breaking figure himself, President Obama arrived in South Africa Friday to find a country drastically transformed by Mandela's influence ? and grappling with the beloved 94-year-old's mortality.

It was unclear whether Mandela's deteriorating health would allow Obama to make a hospital visit. The former South African leader is battling a recurring lung infection and is said to be in critical condition at a hospital in the South African capital of Pretoria.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he made his way to Johannesburg, Obama said he would gauge the situation after he arrived.

"I don't need a photo-op," he said. "And the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela's condition."

Obama's visit to South Africa is seen as something of a tribute to the man who helped inspire his own political activism. The president will pay homage to Mandela at Robben Island, the prison where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. And with South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, facing questions about its effectiveness, Obama will urge the government and the South African people to live up to the democratic example set by their first black president.

"He's a personal hero, but I don't think I'm unique in that regard," Obama said during a news conference Thursday in Senegal, the first stop on his weeklong Africa trip. "I think he's a hero for the world. And if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."

Obama and Mandela have met just once, a hastily arranged meeting in a Washington hotel room in 2005 when Obama was a U.S. senator. A photo of the meeting hangs in Obama's personal office at the White House, showing a smiling Mandela sitting on a chair, his legs outstretched, as the young senator reaches down to shake his hand. A copy of the photo also hangs in Mandela's office in Johannesburg.

Since then, the two have spoken occasionally by telephone, including after the 2008 election, when Mandela called Obama to congratulate him on his victory. The U.S. president called Mandela in 2010 after the South African leader's young granddaughter was killed in a car accident. Obama also wrote the introduction to Mandela's memoir, "Conversations With Myself."

Despite the two men's infrequent contact, people close to Obama say his one-on-one meeting with Mandela left a lasting impression.

"He is one of the few people who the president has respected and admired from afar who, when he met him, exceeded his expectations," said Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser and close friend.

Obama's own political rise has drawn inevitable comparisons to the South African leader. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners and the first black men elected to lead their countries.

But their paths to power have been vastly different. While Mandela fought to end an oppressive government from the confines of a prison cell, Obama attended elite schools and rose through the U.S. political system before running for president.

"President Obama would believe that the challenges he has faced pale in comparison to those faced by President Mandela," Jarrett said.

Mandela had already shaped Obama's political beliefs well before their first encounter. As a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama joined protests against the school's investments during South Africa's apartheid era. In 1981, Obama focused his first public political speech on the topic.

"It's happening an ocean away," Obama said, according to a retelling of the story in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." ''But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not."

More than 30 years later, as he traveled through the African continent, Obama recalled the influence Mandela had had on him during that period of his life.

"I think at that time I didn't necessarily imagine that Nelson Mandela might be released," Obama said Thursday. But the president said he had read Mandela's writings and speeches and understood him to be a man who believed in "treating people equally and was willing to sacrifice his life for that belief."

Following his release from prison, Mandela was elected president in 1994 during South Africa's first all-races elections. He served just one term, focusing in large part on racial reconciliation in the post-apartheid era, and retreated from public life several years ago.

The most recent images of him depict a frail man apparently approaching the end of his life. While South Africans have long been loath to talk about Mandela's inevitable death, there is now a growing sense in the country that the time is near. Well-wishers have delivered flowers and messages of support to the Pretoria hospital where he is being treated, and prayer sessions have been held around the country.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-ties-mandela-loom-over-africa-visit-173837509.html

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"Game Consoles" Are the Final Key to Digital Domination

Google might be building a game console, rumors say. Apple too. Actually, everyone's building game consoles. It's just, they aren't game consoles, exactly. They're puzzle pieces.

Game consoles have historically been their own little colony off to the side of technology. For a while that's because they were seen mainly as an expensive kids' toy, and later because they weren't germane to the music sales or laptops or iPods battles of the time. Now, though, as we're digitizing everything in our lives, that TV-connected box in the middle of every family's living room is suddenly looking pretty important.

Google, Apple, and Microsoft want to be your one-stop digital shop. All three have a desktop OS and a mobile OS. All three are making their own hardware now. They all have stores where you can buy movies and music, and they all have their own music streaming service. They are all branching out, increasingly, into more and more parts of your life. Apple's in your car. Google's on your face. Microsoft is already in your living room. But their offerings are too spread out, too fragmented.

The ultimate for all of these companies, and for you, is One Device. You have one thing?probably your phone, ultimately?and that one thing will do everything for you. It'll control your music system and TV, and it will shepherd all your messages and access all of your photos and movies. It will also probably play your video games.

We're not there yet, but we're close. And Apple and Google's inevitable game-playing, little black living room boxes could be what finally gets us there.

State of Play

Microsoft understood that a gaming console could be a valuable Trojan horse into your living room. Or at least, it was in the best position to act on the idea, with the Xbox 360. The Xbox One is a "real" console, in that it fits into the traditional mold of what a gaming console "should be," while also being a portal into a world of movies, music, social, and more. But that also hamstrings Microsoft in a way, as it tries to leverage a box it knows will be in millions of homes into the broader technological landscape. Also, it's hard to compete if your everything-machine costs $500 and the next guy's is a fraction of that.

Google, meanwhile, has had zero luck getting an Android streaming box off the ground. Third-party stuff has mostly fallen flat, the Nexus Q never shipped, and Google TV-enabled television sets have been punchlines for years now. Even the Ouya, a wonderful little idea, met fairly withering reviews. Google-branded hardware, on the other hand, is generally awesome, and inexpensive. So while it's playing from behind somewhat, it'll be ready to make a serious impact.

Apple seems like it would be in the best position to create an all-in-one gaming box, with the popular and inexpensive Apple TV already running a modified version of iOS. It has a history of games being profitable for developers on iOS. It's already got AirPlay speakers in many homes, and if Siri improves to the point it could power voice commands like a Kinect, you'd have a compelling case for the living room.

What would make an Google or Apple "console" so formidable is that it wouldn't have to beat the Xbox or PS4. They wouldn't even have to compete directly. (Though, if you think both companies wouldn't shell out big bucks for a few prime exclusives, you're nuts.) It would just have to exist. It would tread water, attracting developers steadily into ecosystems that have proven to be profitable, and wait for the technology powering it to catch up with the technology powering Microsoft and Sony's heavy hitters.

The entire tech industry is trending this way. Intel has spent the past several years powering itself down to be able to make chips that are efficient enough to be in phones, but still powerful enough to display newer and better graphics. This year's kind of amazing Haswell chips and their 12-15-hour laptop battery life are born form that. Meanwhile, Qualcomm, AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, and, lately, Apple, are pushing SoC chips (which you find in tablets and phones) higher and higher up the graphical food chain. The Tegra 4 already runs fairly current games fluidly. And while it might gets its brains bashed in by this next generation of consoles, are you sure that's going to be the case four years from now? Or five or six? Sometime this generation, mobile processors will pass the consoles, again, and everyone will look around and ask each other, Wait, why don't we just put this on Android?

Good Enough

The other advantage the underpowered consoles of the future will have? The point of Good Enough. Every time you shift away from one standard for another, there's resistance until you hit the point that the new thing is good enough at whatever it's replacing for all its benefits to shine through. Look at the MacBook Air. It was an idiotic product in 2008. It was small and beautiful for its time, but it was underpowered and overpriced. Then, in 2010, it got a makeover and some new flash-based guts and a chipset update. Its parts still weren't current, but the Core 2 Duo was good enough to get the job done for most people doing everyday computer tasks. Three years later, ultrabooks and MacBook Airs are the dominant form of laptop.

This happens all over technology. We're approaching that point with mirrorless cameras versus entry or even midlevel DSLRs. We reached it with digital cameras themselves with the Canon G1 or the Nikon Coolpix 990 (or maybe the D1 or 1DS). The Tesla might be what finally gets us there with electric cars. The point is, there will always be a tradeoff, but there is always a point where you can decide the step backward you're taking in one respect doesn't offset the steps ahead you're making elsewhere.

For a Google or Apple gaming system?or more accurately, platform?those gains would be significant. You'd get infinite backwards compatibility, refined distribution systems, and total integration to all of your media. More importantly, though, you'd still have mostly acceptible graphics (and with the right art direction, beautiful, even), and all the room for innovative gameplay, story, and creativity that you've seen in games for decades.

That won't be what we see at the start, of course. When and if Apple and Google pull the trigger, they'd probably be more like upscale Ouyas. That's OK, though. We can wait for the future, as long as we know it's coming.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/game-consoles-are-the-final-key-to-digital-domination-611978365

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Obama: U.S. Should Lead Assault on Climate Change

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. President Obama announced a plan this week calling on the environmental protection agency to regulate how much carbon power plants are allowed to emit. He had tried and failed to get Congress to act on climate change from the very first days of his presidency. This week in a speech at Georgetown University, he announced it was time to take matters into his own hands.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock. It demands our attention now. And this my plan to meet them, a plan to cut carbon pollution, a plan to protect our country from the impacts of climate change and a plan to lead the world in a coordinated assault on a changing climate.

(APPLAUSE)

FLATOW: Is it really possible for the U.S., long considered a foot-dragger on international climate negotiations to become a world leader on climate change. And how far can the president go without the help of Congress? Can his plan even put a dent in our emissions? What do you think? We're taking a poll on our website. Are you satisfied with what you heard in President Obama's plan? You can go to sciencefriday.com/climate, sciencefriday.com/climate, to let us know.

In the meantime, we're going to talk to David Roberts. He is senior staff writer covering energy and climate for Grist.org in Seattle. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Mr. Roberts.

DAVID ROBERTS: Hi Ira, thanks for having me.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Can you give us a - what are the main basic points of President Obama's plan that he outlined?

ROBERTS: Well, you mentioned the upcoming EPA regulations on power plants, but actually that's only one of probably two dozen individual provisions in the plan. It's sort of a - it's Bill Clintonesque in that it is kind of laundry list of small-bore actions that they're grouped in three categories.

One is cutting carbon pollution. One is adaptation, as they call it, which means preparing for the effects of climate change. And the third is international engagement on this issue. And under each of those headings there are four or five pieces.

FLATOW: Can he do this without the cooperation of Congress?

ROBERTS: Yes, well, this is - well, I think the way to look at this plan is it's sort of a canvas of what's possible using the executive branch only. I think he has tried and tried with Congress, and it has become very clear that Republicans in Congress are totally unwilling to acknowledge the problem, much less do anything about it. So I think in that sense the document is remarkable in that it is really a thorough, a thorough sort of scan of the executive branch, how it engages with carbon and climate and tweaks in almost every part of it.

So everything in the - nothing in the plan requires congressional action. So yes, theoretically it's all possible.

FLATOW: But there are no numbers in the plan.

ROBERTS: Well, there are numbers here and there. The big number is, you know, remember in the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, I think it was, Obama promised to meet this short-term target, which is 17 percent carbon reductions from 2005 levels by 2020. And this is what the administration says it's trying to do with this plan.

And, you know, lots of the effects of some of this stuff are very hard to predict. But they are saying that they are going to get to that 17 percent number, or at least really close to it. So that's the big number. And there are some more. There are individual numbers throughout the plan. But it is - a lot of it is very sort of bureaucratic stuff.

There's a lot of working groups. There's a lot of pulling people together, disseminating best practices. And it's just hard to sort of - it's hard to predict numerically what's going to come out of that.

FLATOW: And all that stuff takes a lot of time, the comment periods, as you say, the meetings with utilities, refinements of the proposals. The president, does he have any real hope of seeing any of these regulations actually having gone into effect before he leaves office?

ROBERTS: Sure, a lot of it he can do quickly, and a lot of it, I should note, a lot of it is already underway. I mean, a lot of this plan that he released is sort of look at this thing we're already doing. So some of this stuff is already underway. In terms of the big piece you highlighted, which is the EPA power plant regulations, alongside the plan he issued a memo, a presidential memorandum to the EPA, which laid out a timeline for these regulations.

And if EPA meets that timeline, then there will be final proposals on these regulations issued before he leaves office. Of course that's a big if because these things are difficult, and EPA has missed deadlines before, but it's worth saying that a presidential memo specifically laying out a timeline is much more powerful and hard to get around than the sort of fuzzier deadlines of the past. So there's some chance.

FLATOW: That's a pretty bold prediction to say that this country, which does not have a reputation for being number one at any of the climate control meetings, to say it's going to become number one now or the leader.

ROBERTS: Well, on the international piece, it's interesting, there's sort of two schools of thought. One is to continue pursuing this UNFCCC process, which brings all the countries of the world together and tries to create one grand, binding document to bind them all. And the Obama administration has more or less given up on that process. That's what people say they're dragging their feet on.

And I think it's true that they don't find that process fruitful. What they're turning to instead is sort of focusing on the big emitters and doing these sort of bilateral or multilateral deals on specific issues. So it's more a stepwise, you know, pieces here rather than trying to go for the big brass ring.

FLATOW: The president also made some remarks about the Keystone Pipeline, which is not true that they were not in his prepared statements that were released?

ROBERTS: Well, it's interesting, I was on a call with senior administration officials the day before the plan. They were previewing the plan and the speech, and there was nothing said about Keystone. As a matter of fact, they were asked about Keystone, and they said specifically no, he won't say anything about that.

So clearly, whatever it was was added late in the game, which is really interesting to imagine why because what he said on Keystone was so sort of ambiguous that everybody's kind of reading their own interpretation into it. So it's puzzling to me what the political logic was for bringing that up since it mostly just serves to distract from the other stuff.

FLATOW: What did he say basically, that he...

ROBERTS: Well, he said that if building the Keystone pipeline would increase net carbon emissions, then it's not in our national interest. And that's going to be a key part of his decision. But of course the whole argument about Keystone all along has been whether it will in fact increase emissions because, you know, Keystone supporters say if you don't build that pipeline, they're just going to dig up the oil and ship it off some other direction, and it's going to get burned anyway, and net, net, there will be the same amount of carbon emissions.

So, you know, saying that's going to be part of his determination doesn't really add anything to the discussion and his - sort of this gnomic quality to the way he said it has everybody in the - everybody in the energy world is now saying oh, he agreed with me, he's going to do my thing. So that was a puzzling episode, I thought.

FLATOW: The president has beaten a drum over the years of his administration about the need to develop new green technologies that will create green jobs that will put people back to work that will boost the economy. Will these proposed regulations act to stimulate any of those ideas?

ROBERTS: Yes, yes, I would say yes they will and not just the EPA regulations, but there's a lot more in there where he's pumping money into research, pumping money into adaptation measures. One big piece is the federal government itself is aiming to get 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

And so that's going to - so all this, you know, there's this whole network of businesses that provide the federal government with stuff, and setting that target is going to spur all those businesses to innovate and develop new ways of providing the government with that energy. So even that piece alone, if he had announced that piece in isolation, that would be a big deal.

And that's true of a lot of the pieces of the plan. The individual pieces are actually quite significant, but they're sort of blurred together in this one big document.

FLATOW: As someone who covers energy and climate change, was there anything left out that you expected to hear?

ROBERTS: There was a big piece left out, although I expected it to be left out, and I just actually wrote about a post about this today. The big missing piece is coal in the Pacific Northwest, which is, you know, the Powder River Basin up in Wyoming and Montana is a huge coal field, and it's on public land. So the public is leasing that coal to private companies, who are now proposing to ship it over to the West Coast and export it to China.

And that whole process, digging it up, shipping it and then burning it in China, is going to be a huge net addition to greenhouse gases, and an inspector general report just found that the whole coal leasing program is corrupt. They're not getting market rates. They're not doing competitive bidding. I mean, the whole situation up there is a mess, and it's a big piece of the carbon puzzle, too. And I think that Obama really needs to turn his attention in that direction.

FLATOW: Now we were just out in Seattle with the program, and the mayor of Seattle was on this show. And again, and he was talking about how they were trying to block that shippage of coal that might go through Seattle and the whole Pacific Northwest.

ROBERTS: It's a huge fight up in the Pacific Northwest right now, in Oregon, in Washington, in all these little towns. They're going to have literally dozens and dozens of coal trains a day coming through these little towns, which are known for being sort of bucolic tourist destinations.

So - and the whole thing that activists are trying to do and that the mayor of Seattle is trying to do and that the governors of Washington and Oregon are trying to do is kind of nationalize this thing to get a big - to get an overall assessment of the project. And the Army Corps of Engineers, just a few days ago, refused to do a comprehensive assessment.

And in my view, that's Obama's Army Corps of Engineers, and if he wanted to, he could go down there and kick them in the rump and tell them to get on it. So that's what I think was left out of the speech.

FLATOW: He is the commander in chief. So what will tell us, as an observer, what signs might we look for to see if this is progressing, how it's progressing?

ROBERTS: The big thing is whether EPA meets the schedule that he laid out in his memo. And the first piece of that would be in September. They're suppose to re-propose regulations for a new power plant. So it'll be good to keep eyes on the EPA. But the interesting thing about this, because it's not legislation, because it's not going through Congress, a lot of this stuff just goes on behind public view.

It's just sort of bureaucratic stuff that goes on within federal agencies, and so it's a lot - in a sense it's very difficult for the public to know it's happening, which has its good and bad aspects. I mean, I think in one sense Obama wanted this plan to kind of come and go in the news cycle and not to be a big focus and not to draw a lot of attention because everything he's doing he can do just fine without the public being involved or knowing and without Congress knowing or being involved. It's just kind of puttering along behind the scenes.

So, you know, it's going to take some good reporting, I think, and journalism to really dig down into the bowels of the bureaucracy and make sure that this stuff is actually happening.

FLATOW: All right, David Roberts, we'll be in touch with you to see what's happening. Thank you very much for joining us.

ROBERTS: Thank you.

FLATOW: David Roberts is senior writer covering energy and climate change for the Grist.org in Seattle. We asked you to poll on our website. Are you satisfied with what you heard in the president's plan? So far 50 percent said - 54 percent said no, that was the top. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. Don't go away.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/06/28/196594972/obama-u-s-should-lead-assault-on-climate-change?ft=1&f=1007

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Pets Cost Billions in Damaged Electronics | Care2 Healthy Living

We love them like children. But our pets can be costly, in more ways than one. Besides the expense of feeding them and giving them proper health care, according to a recent survey, pets damage about eight million electronic devices every year in the U.S.

The survey, sponsored by the San Francisco insurance company SquareTrade Inc., involved 1,200 people and their pets. SquareTrade estimates that we lose $3 billion every year repairing or replacing electronic devices damaged by pets. Among the most gobbled gadgets were cell phones.

Surprisingly, dogs are only twice as likely as cats to damage electronics, according to the study, and male pets are 50 percent more likely than females. I say surprisingly, because I guess I can?t imagine cats chewing or even clawing at my cellphone (share your story below if you?ve had a different experience).

Almost 20 percent of Americans have seen one of their electronic devices mangled by a pet. Maybe the most interesting bit from the survey: People who allow their pets to sleep in their beds or ride on their laps while driving are up to three times more likely to have a electronics damaged by their animals. No word on a theory for the correlation.

?After seeing so many claims come in that involved pets, we decided to look into the data and see just how big a problem this was. And the results were pretty astounding,? Ty Shay, CMO at SquareTrade, told ZDNet. ?Using an $800 smartphone as a chew toy is a pricey slip-up, not to mention it?s the device most of us can?t live without.?

SquareTrade sells protection plans for electronic devices, such as iPhones, computers, and iPads so they obviously have a little biased interest in the results, though they are tough to deny. As more and more of us take part in additional electronic devices, such as tablets, we obviously become more vulnerable. Your best bet is to simply be vigilant about keeping them out of reach.

Also read:

Extreme Dog Grooming: Have We Gone Too Far?

6 Common Cat Behavior Myths Decoded

7 Common Dog Behavior Myths Decoded

Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/pets-cost-billions-in-damaged-electronics.html

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Max Sound's Spins HD makes Android mp3 playback not suck

Coming update makes it easier to organize and play your library while keeping all the sound improvements you expect from Spins HD

While the debate over keeping your music collection stored locally or in the cloud will never end, the one thing most people agree on is that a good music player app makes a world of difference in the way those files sound. Everyone has a favorite, but Max Sound is pushing out an update to Spins HD that you're going to want to look at.

Spins HD takes your existing on-device music collection and runs it through more than equalizer presets, the app delivers HD sound by converting the file into an actual analog sound wave. While it's still a compressed digital file, this allows the "full breadth" of the original recording to come through, delivering better sounding music. These claims may come from the developers, but I will say the files do sound better when playing in Spins HD, and often times much better. And it's easy -- there is a page of presets that work well, and for the more adventurous, you can also set the tone for high, low, and midpoint sounds from your music. Great sound from an app that's easy to use is always a plus.

Smart phones have taken the place of the mp3 player for most of us, so getting great sounding audio is important for the connoisseurs out there. The coming update for Spins HD keeps the great sound you expect from the player, and adds a much improved UI that makes it easier to manage and sort your playlists and songs. If you're a current user, look for the update shortly, and if you haven't tried Spins HD yet, click the link above to give it a whirl. A press release and series of screenshots is after the break.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/wB5Dirr0b30/story01.htm

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New Sqrrl CEO Discusses Security and Business Strategy ...

Mark Terezoni, CEO of Sqrrl, joins John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE for their ongoing coverage of Hadoop Summit. sqrrl builds software for Apache Accumulo and enables the development of secure, real-time applications that leverage big data. The three discuss security and Sqrrl?s business strategy.

Vellante observes that there is significantly greater awareness of security in the industry and asks how Sqrrrl architects security. Terezoni states that security is not a bolt on. He explains,?You can?t at some point decide you want to be secure and try to bolt it on.? We?ve built the ecosystem to allow it to interface and work in an enterprise environment. He notes that Sqrrl has added some encryption capabilities around the whole system. Terezoni?s main concern with security is that, ?It can?t be a pointed solution, it can?t address one piece of the ecosystem. It?s a stack. When we?re talking about security is that we have to address the whole stack.? He adds that more projects that provide security will help HDFS and Hadoop roll out more readily to customers.

Sqrrl enterprise is in revenue now with version 1.1. of the product, which has been out for a month. Terezoni says the company is targeting opportunities in the government, banking, finance, telecommunications and healthcare. He explains that the company offers ?a solution for developers to build real time big data applications very quickly and very easily. Once its ingested, its readily available.? The company has also built in discovery analytics.

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Kathryn Buford is a PhD student in sociology whose research explores digital communities across the African diaspora, social entrepreneurship and the arts. Kathryn's work has been featured in various online publications as well as the online magazine for Live Unchained (www.liveunchained.com), which features innovative arts, media and events across the world. Contact her at kathryn@liveunchained.com and follow her on Twitter (@yeskathryn) for musings on creativity, technology, entrepreneurship and society.

Source: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/06/27/new-sqrrl-ceo-discusses-security-and-business-strategy/

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South Africa: Emotion builds over Mandela

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africans were torn on Wednesday between the desire not to lose a critically ill Nelson Mandela, who defined the aspirations of so many of his compatriots, and resignation that the beloved former prisoner and president is approaching the end of his life.

The sense of anticipation and foreboding about 94-year-old Mandela's fate has grown since late Sunday, when the South African government declared that the condition of the statesman, who was rushed to a hospital in Pretoria on June 8, had deteriorated.

A tide of emotional tributes has built on social media and in hand-written messages and flowers laid outside the hospital and Mandela's home. On Wednesday, about 20 children from a day care center posted a hand-made card outside the hospital and recited a poem.

"Hold on, old man," was one of the lines in the Zulu poem, according to the South African Press Association.

In recent days, international leaders, celebrities, athletes and others have praised Mandela, not just as the man who steered South Africa through its tense transition from white racist rule to democracy two decades ago, but as a universal symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation.

In South Africa's Eastern Cape province, where Mandela grew up, a traditional leader said the time was near for Mandela, who is also known by his clan name, Madiba.

"I am of the view that if Madiba is no longer enjoying life, and is on life support systems, and is not appreciating what is happening around him, I think the good Lord should take the decision to put him out of his suffering," said the tribal chief, Phathekile Holomisa.

"I did speak to two of his family members, and of course, they are in a lot of pain, and wish that a miracle might happen, that he recovers again, and he becomes his old self again," he said. "But at the same time they are aware there is a limit what miracles you can have."

For many South Africans, Mandela's decline is a far more personal matter, echoing the protracted and emotionally draining process of losing one of their own elderly relatives.

One nugget of wisdom about the arc of life and death came from Matthew Rusznyah, a 9-year-old boy who stopped outside Mandela's home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to show his appreciation.

"We came because we care about Mandela being sick, and we wish we could put a stop to it, like snap our fingers," he said. "But we can't. It's how life works."

His mother, Lee Rusznyah, said Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison under apartheid before becoming South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994, had made the world a better place.

"All of us will end," Thabo Makgoba, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We just want him to be peacefully released, whatever he's feeling at this moment, and to be reunited with his Maker at the perfect time, when God so wills."

The archbishop said: "Ultimately, we are all mortal. At some stage or another, we all have to die, and we have to move on, we have to be recalled by our Maker and Redeemer. We have to create that space for Madiba, to come to terms within himself, with that journey."

On Tuesday, Makgoba visited Mandela and offered a prayer in which he wished for a "peaceful, perfect, end" for the anti-apartheid leader, who was taken to the Pretoria hospital to be treated for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.

In the prayer, he asked for courage to be granted to Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and others who love him "at this hard time of watching and waiting," and he appealed for divine help for the medical team treating Mandela.

Visitors to the hospital on Wednesday included Mandela's former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The couple divorced in 1996.

"As he remains in a critical condition in hospital, we must keep him and the family in our thoughts and prayers every minute," President Jacob Zuma said Wednesday.

Mandela, whose 95th birthday is on July 18, served a single five-year term as president and afterward focused on charitable causes, but he withdrew from public life years ago and became increasingly frail in recent years. He last made a public appearance in 2010 at the World Cup soccer tournament, which was hosted by South Africa. At that time, he did not speak to the crowd and was bundled against the cold in a stadium full of fans.

On April 29, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Zuma and other leaders of the ruling party, the African National Congress, to Mandela's home. Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage ? the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year ? showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand.

"Let's accept instead of crying," said Lucas Aedwaba, a security officer in Pretoria who described Mandela as a hero. "Let's celebrate that the old man lived and left his legacy."

Dan Lehman, an American academic, chose a jogging route on Wednesday morning that passed by the hospital where Mandela is being treated.

"I was just going out for my morning run down here and come to pay my respects to the greatest man in the world," Lehman said. Then he began to cry.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-emotion-builds-over-mandela-135402784.html

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The Engadget Show 44: Education with Google, OLPC, Code.org, LeapFrog, SparkFun, Adafruit and more

It's time to rethink the way our children learn. It's all a bit overwhelming, attempting to restructure the age-old classroom model, particularly in a system as bogged down in bureaucratic red tape as education. This month, however, we packed up our things and toured the country to find out how educational institutions are adopting new models to help reinvent the learning process -- rather than sitting idly by, waiting for the system to change around them. Naturally, technology is playing a huge role in that shift, moving from models of teaching to models of learning, where students can explore, express themselves and learn at their own speed.

We kick things off in Chicago, where Jackie Moore, a former systems programmer, is teaching inner city students how to build robots in a shopping mall basement at LevelUP. Next up, we head Miami and California, to see how technologies like the iPad, Google Chromebook and One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop are being implemented in three schools, including interviews with educators, students, OLPC CEO Rodrigo Halaby and Google director of product management, Rajen Sheth. We'll also talk to component retailers SparkFun and Adafruit about the initiatives those companies have implemented to help kids learn electronics at an early age, and then we sit down with American Museum of Natural History president, Ellen Futter, to discuss the ways the New York City institution is redefining itself for the 21st century.

We've also got an interview with Ali Partovi, a serial entrepreneur, who is working to make computer science an essential part of the elementary-level STEM program, through Code.org. Richard Culatta, the acting director of the US Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology discusses how devices can help target the learning process for individual students and LeapFrog CEO John Barbour tells us how his company is rethinking the educational toy. All that plus prognostications from John Roderick and some really sweet moose dioramas can be yours to enjoy after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Laptops, Robots, Tablets, Science, Internet, Software, HD, Mobile, Alt, Google, Acer

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/g9NqE-rhFoY/

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Foster Parenting Adventures: CD's pre-school celebrates her adoption

CD has been in an extraordinary daycare/preschool since she was 18 months old, about 3 weeks after she joined our family. ?Back in those days, CD had many fears. ?This preschool has worked with children in foster care before as they are licensed to accept the funding from the state source that pays for children in foster care to go to daycare. ?They supported her when she had intense separation anxiety. ?They held her and soothed her when an unfamiliar adult would enter the room and she would panic. ?They understood that CD had a tendency to choose one attachment figure at a time and if that teacher was going to be absent, they alerted us so we could choose to keep her home as she would not handle the day well.

CD has thrived in this school. ?She is no longer afraid in school at all. ?She has generalized those feelings of safety and security to the whole school, all the teachers and all the adults that enter the building. ?Her social skills are extraordinary. ?It has been her home away from home.

On Thursday, when I came to pick CD up from school, I found an extraordinary booklet that the school staff had put together. ?In it were notes from all of her teachers and good wishes from the rest of the staff. ?The children in her class each added their handprints to a page and signed their names. ?There were quotes about how it is love that makes a family scattered throughout. ?It was beautiful. ?I was so moved. ?I have since covered every page in plastic so that it can be kept intact for as long as possible.

On Thursday, CD's teacher told me that they would like to do something with the class in honor of CD's adoption day on Monday (today). ?I thought it was a wonderful idea. ?CD and I stopped at a bakery this morning to pick up rainbow sprinkle cookies for the class

and my family donated this book to the school in honor of CD's adoption:

Parr's Family Book introduces preschoolers to the notion that families are created in different ways. ?Some are big, some are small, all love to hug and kiss you. ?Some families look like each other, some have two moms, some have two dads, some look like their dog and some families adopt children. . . .

I also loaned the class this book, which is my favorite book for CD introducing her to adoption:

Most adoption books I have found are about infancy adoption, international adoption or have strong religious language. ?Others talk around adoption by not using the word or explaining how it works with human beings as they focus on something like a duck being part of a family of dogs. ?This book explains in all in concrete, preschool age appropriate language. ?It is the truth, it is upbeat and it is all about love. ?The preschool director and CD's teacher were thrilled that I brought the book in as they believe, as I do, that her classmates (none of whom are adopted) could only benefit by being introduced to the idea that families come together in all different ways.

This is how the world changes. ?This is how people in the minority become accepted rather than stigmatized. ?It is one child at a time, one teacher at a time and one family at a time.

I am so grateful to CD's school. ?Their support these last three years will forever be appreciated by our family.

Source: http://fosterparentingadventures.blogspot.com/2013/06/cds-pre-school-celebrates-her-adoption.html

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Send him back: US urges nations to return Snowden

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) ? The U.S. grasped for help Monday from both adversaries and uneasy allies in an effort to catch fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. The White House demanded that he be denied asylum, blasted China for letting him go and urged Russia to "do the right thing" and send him back to America to face espionage charges.

Snowden was believed to be in Russia, where he fled Sunday after weeks of hiding out in Hong Kong following his disclosure of the broad scope of two highly classified counterterror surveillance programs to two newspapers. The programs collect vast amounts of Americans' phone records and worldwide online data in the name of national security.

Snowden had flown from Hong Kong to Russia, and was expected to fly early Monday to Havana, from where he would continue on to Ecuador, where he has applied for asylum. But he didn't get on that plane and his exact whereabouts were unclear.

The founder of WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling organization that has embraced Snowden, said the American was only passing through Russia on his way to an unnamed destination to avoid the reach of U.S. authorities. Julian Assange said Snowden had applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries.

Despite its diplomatic tough talk, the U.S. faces considerable difficulty in securing cooperation on Snowden from nations with whom it has chilly relations.

The White House said Hong Kong's refusal to detain Snowden had "unquestionably" hurt relations between the United States and China. While Hong Kong has a high degree of autonomy from the rest of China, experts said Beijing probably orchestrated Snowden's exit in an effort to remove an irritant in Sino-U.S. relations. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met earlier this month in California to smooth over rough patches in the countries' relationship, including allegations of hacking into each other's computer systems.

Secretary of State John Kerry urged Moscow to "do the right thing" amid high-level pressure on Russia to turn over Snowden.

"We're following all the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure that the rule of law is observed," Obama told reporters when asked if he was confident that Russia would expel Snowden.

Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, said the U.S. was expecting the Russians "to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."

Carney was less measured about China.

"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," he said. "And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. ...This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship."

Snowden has acknowledged revealing details of top-secret surveillance programs that sweep up millions of phone and Internet records daily. He is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor through Booz Allen to be a computer systems analyst. In that job, he gained access to documents ? many of which he has given to The Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.

Snowden also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data," and is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents.

Assange and attorneys for WikiLeaks assailed the U.S. as "bullying" foreign nations into refusing asylum to Snowden. WikiLeaks counsel Michael Ratner said Snowden is protected as a whistleblower by the same international treaties that the U.S. has in the past used to criticize policies in China and African nations.

The U.S. government's dual lines of diplomacy ? harsh with China, hopeful with the Russians ? came just days after Obama met separately with leaders of both countries in an effort to close gaps on some of the major disputes facing them. Additionally, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. has made demands to "a series of governments," including Ecuador, that Snowden be barred from any international travel other than to be returned to the U.S.

Ventrell said he did not know if that included Iceland. Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation. But authorities there have insisted that Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request.

Ecuador's president and foreign minister declared that national sovereignty and universal principles of human rights ? not U.S. prodding ? would govern any decision they might make on granting asylum to Snowden.

Ecuador has rejected some previous U.S. efforts at cooperation and has been helping Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

Formally, Snowden's application for Ecuadoran asylum remains only under consideration. But Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino made little effort to disguise his government's position. He told reporters in Hanoi that the choice Ecuador faced in hosting Snowden was "betraying the citizens of the world or betraying certain powerful elites in a specific country."

President Rafael Correa said on Twitter that "we will take the decision that we feel most suitable, with absolute sovereignty." Correa, who took office in 2007, is a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and is an ally of leftist president Evo Morales of Bolivia. Correa also had aligned himself with Venezuela's late leader, Hugo Chavez, a chief U.S. antagonist in the region for years.

In April 2011 the Obama administration expelled the Ecuadorean ambassador to Washington after the U.S. envoy to Ecuador, Heather Hodges, was expelled for making corruption allegations about senior Ecuadorean police authorities in confidential documents disclosed by WikiLeaks.

American experts said the U.S. will have limited, if any, influence to persuade governments to turn over Snowden if he heads to Cuba or nations in South America that are seen as hostile to Washington.

"There's little chance Ecuador would give him back" if that country agrees to take him, said James F. Jeffrey., a former ambassador and career diplomat.

Steve Saltzburg, a former senior Justice Department prosecutor, said it's little surprise that China refused to hand over Snowden, and he predicted Russia won't either.

"We've been talking the talk about how both these counties abuse people who try to express their First Amendment rights, so I think that neither country is going to be very inclined to help us very much," said Saltzburg, now a law professor at George Washington University in Washington. "That would be true with Cuba if he ends up there."

The United States formally sought Snowden's extradition but was rebuffed by Hong Kong officials who said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Snowden had been believed to have been in a transit area in Moscow's airport where he would not be considered as entering Russian territory. Assange declined to discuss where Snowden was but said he was safe. The U.S. has revoked his passport.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Eileen Sullivan, Kimberly Dozier and Robert Burns in Washington, Lynn Berry, Vladimir Isachenkov and Max Seddon in Moscow, Kevin Chan in Hong Kong and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/send-him-back-us-urges-nations-return-snowden-221545517.html

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lern2play Resources and Information. This website is for sale!

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Funeral plans set for James Gandolfini

NEW YORK (AP) ? Funeral services for actor James Gandolfini will be Thursday at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.

An HBO spokeswoman speaking on behalf of the family says the funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m.

The 51-year-old star of "The Sopranos" died Wednesday in Rome. Family spokesman Michael says Gandolfini died of a heart attack.

The Italian news agency ANSA reports Gandolfini's body departed Rome for the United States on Sunday. Kobold earlier told reporters the "provisional plan" was to repatriate Gandolfini's body Monday.

The actor had been headed to Sicily to appear at the Taormina Film Festival, which paid tribute to him Saturday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/funeral-plans-set-james-gandolfini-222624358.html

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Obama to unveil climate plan in Tuesday speech

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is preparing to unveil his long-awaited national plan to combat climate change in a major speech, he announced on Saturday.

"There's no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change," Obama said in an online video released by the White House. "But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can."

People consulting with White House officials on Obama's plan, to be unveiled Tuesday at Georgetown University, say they expect him to put forth regulations on heat-trapping gases emitted by existing coal-fired power plans. They were not authorized to disclose details about the plan ahead of the announcement and requested anonymity.

Environmental groups have been pleading with Obama to take that step, but the administration has said it's focused first on controls on new power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency, using its authority under the Clean Air Act, has already proposed controls on new plants, but the rules have been delayed ? to the chagrin of states and environmental groups threatening to sue over the delays.

An administration official said last week that Obama was still weighing whether to include existing plants in the climate plan. The official wasn't authorized to comment by name and requested anonymity.

The White House wouldn't disclose any details Saturday about what steps Obama may call for. But his senior energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said last week that controls on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants would be a major focus. She also said the plan would boost energy efficiency of appliances and buildings, plus expand renewable energy.

Putting a positive spin on a contentious partisan issue, Obama said the U.S. is uniquely poised to deal with the serious challenges posed by climate change. He said American scientists and engineers would have to design new fuels and energy sources, and workers will have to adapt to a clean energy economy.

"We'll need all of us, as citizens, to do our part to preserve God's creation for future generations," Obama said.

Environmental groups have for months been pushing Obama to make good on a threat he issued to lawmakers in February in his State of the Union address: "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will." Obama's move to take the matter into his own hands appears to reflect a growing consensus that opposition in Congress is too powerful for any meaningful, sweeping climate legislation to pass anytime soon.

"They shouldn't wait for Congress to act, because they'll be out of office by the time that Congress gets its act together," Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in an interview.

Environmental groups applauded the announcement that Obama was finally releasing a plan for executive action, but made clear they want to see firm proposals ? including controls for existing power plants.

"Combating climate change means curbing carbon pollution ? for the first time ever ? from the biggest single source of such dangerous gases: our coal-fired power plants," said Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resources Defense Council. "We stand ready to help President Obama in every way we can."

Another key issue hanging over the announcement ? but unlikely to be mentioned on Tuesday ? is Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil extracted from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. A concerted campaign by environmental activists to persuade Obama to nix the pipeline appears to be an uphill battle. The White House insists the State Department is making the decision independently.

Obama's speech on Tuesday will come the day before he leaves for a weeklong trip to three African nations.

___

Online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcL3_zzgWeU

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-22-US-Obama-Climate-Change/id-f720b89da85949c8a69abe7bac2e11fd

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The Daily Roundup for 06.21.2013

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Filed under: Misc, Sony

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/GURkaV7oi04/

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Sky Faces New Challenges From Coliseum Over Internet... | Stuff.co.nz

TIM HUNTER YOUR PORTFOLIO

Getty Images

Play of the day: Coliseum Sports Media chief executive Tim Martin fronts the media in Auckland last week.

Sky TV's?shares staggered on Wednesday after a sideswipe from new football broadcaster Coliseum.

It was an interesting development for football fans, but it also showed how in the daily dance of sharemarket investment it takes two to tango.

When shares trade, every seller needs a buyer. And typically they will have different views on the attractions of a particular business.

Some will have seen Coliseum as the thin end of a wedge that will ultimately shatter Sky's business into a dozen fragments and end its reign as a dominant force.

Others saw it as just another lightweight hoofing it in a heavyweight game with as much impact on Sky as a rat on an open plan office - there is a frisson of alarm and then life goes on.

The net result of these views was a sudden drop in the share price from the $5.67 open down to $5.20, followed by a slow climb back above $5.43.

Sky has been a popular blue-chip stock for years and is firmly ensconced in portfolios big and small around the country. Perhaps it was no surprise then that initial comments from analysts and fund managers saw little impact for the pay TV company.

They are probably right. Some say the rights to the English premier league are likely to have cost Coliseum $2 million to $3 million. If so, they would be about 1 per cent of Sky's total programming rights cost - last year the total was $216m.

A Sky Sport package costs about $26 a month or $312 a year more than the basic package, and about 558,000 subscribers get Sport.

If 1 per cent of Sports subscribers were die-hard fans of English football and switched to Coliseum, that would represent about 5500 subscribers, or revenue for Sky of $1.7m a year.

With Coliseum's EPL subscription costing $150 a season, that would represent revenue of $825,000 a season for Coliseum, or $2.5m over its three-year licence period.

Using these numbers we can start to gauge the effect of the new service on Sky, and it looks like the football fan base would have to be large before it made much of a dent. In that sense, the share-price drop was probably a buying opportunity - a drop of 24c a share represents a cut on Sky's market value of about $90m, way more than the likely financial impact of the EPL rights loss.

But if Coliseum was not itself a significant problem for Sky, maybe it was the harbinger of greater competition for content as the internet becomes a realistic delivery system. This is an interesting question, and analysts were alive to it before Coliseum announced its play. A research note from Tristan Joll and Lance Reynolds at UBS last month declared Sky TV a "buy" with a 12-month price target of $6.30, citing an "earnings sweet-spot" as the company enjoyed the benefits of previous investment.

"Risks to our rating include entry of internet competitors, fragmentation of entertainment content and pressure on NZRFU rights at the 2015 renegotiation window," they said. But "all are factored into our forecasts, with declining content margins a fact of life going forward."

Greg Main, at First NZ Capital, was also positive in a May 15 research note with Sky "riding a cash flow sweet-spot for the next two to three years". His outlook was more cautious with a 12-month target of $5.70 and a rating of neutral, although there was some upside because Sky could offer a special dividend or on-market buyback.

Both research notes followed an investor day in which Sky briefed analysts on its current thinking.

Main wrote that the briefing "discussed and again discounted the risk of sports bodies going direct where the current relationship with SKT is strong (ie, SKT pays them a lot for their content already). While it could happen in some overseas sports with a small New Zealand following, the cost requirements and coverage required for the main sports makes this a harder proposition."

The potential for a Coliseum-type move was evidently well understood by Sky, and its view that local sports such as rugby were less vulnerable to internet competition looks justified. However, the presence of NZRU board member and former broadcasting executive Brent Impey at the Coliseum press conference indicated the rugby establishment is taking a close interest in developments. Even if Sky is unchallenged as a rugby broadcaster, come 2015 the NZRU, or its international equivalent Sanzar, may demand widespread internet distribution for the product.

Although we don't know how change will happen it would be wrong to assume the internet won't pose challenges for Sky. The comfort for investors is that the company has so far proved highly adaptable and can eye the future from a position of strength.

Last week's Portfolio column incorrectly stated Wynyard Group's expected revenue was $19 million this year and $24.6m in 2014. The prospectus figures are in fact $21.5m and $27m respectively. I apologise for the error.

Tim Hunter is deputy editor of the Fairfax Business Bureau.

- ? Fairfax NZ News

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/8826559/Challenges-from-internet-for-Sky

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