Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:53:24 GMT

AP Says No to Paris Hilton Stories!

No gossips about Paris Hilton for a whole week! No one should bother! Right? This is a blackout experiment conducted by News agency Associated Press.

Associated Press has banned its journalists from filing stories about Paris Hilton. They will no longer run wire stories about Paris Hilton.

AP entertainment editor, Jesse Washington announced the ban to staff on February 13, through an official memo.

Washington was quoted as saying of the ban,

There was a surprising amount of hand-wringing. A lot of people in the newsroom were saying this was tampering with the news.

Well, hotel heiress Hilton was No. 5 last year on the Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people) Buzz Index, a list of overall top searches on the Web site. This means people like to read about her. People are fascinated by her.

But still paparazzi would not stop following her around the world. Not being in news also makes news!

Read

Posted by: Nidhi      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:49:58 GMT

Outsource Your Packaging to Reduce Gestation Time

Outsource your packaging and you are all set to bring down the time for introducing new products in the market. Catch hold of packaging contractors as they have the necessary resources for meeting the needs of the company and they can install the equipments quicker as compared to the pharma companies whereas in the case of companies the gestation period for a number of companies could be as high as one year.

If you can outsource your packaging then you can even free your resources and utilize them for more profitable activities. This trend seems to be on the rise and some of the packaging work is being outsourced to countries such as China and India even though pharma companies look for specialist outsourcing partners for their work. The general requirement for most of the companies looking for a packaging partner is cost, control, confidentiality and capacity. Pharma companies certainly stand to gain from it as it helps them to concentrate on their core competencies.

Via in-pharmatechnologist

Posted by: Gautam      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:46:07 GMT

Is YouTube Selling Links to Politicians?

If you try to explore YouTube more intently, you will find a section which is intended for high profile US politicians. And if you observe scrupulously, you also will learn that there is inconsistency in the implementation of linking.

A number of politicians are given direct links while others are deprived. Politicians which are given direct and straight links include Dennis Kucinich, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Duncan Hunter, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Barack Obama.

On the other hand, those politicians who suffer YouTube's disparity in treatment include Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Tom Tancredo, and Bill Richardson. Their banners are not linked at all. Some of the politicians were also given a rel=nofollow tag in their banner.

With this occurrence, people are asking whether Google's YouTube is selling straight text links. The blogosphere has no idea whether the links are paid or otherwise. This is the issue that the search engine giant's video division has to respond to in order to provide timely illumination. Posted by: noel      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:43:49 GMT

More Oil in Iraq: IHS Report

IHS, a consultancy firm, has undertaken a study and concluded that Iraqs oil reserves may be twice as vast as current estimates. The most comprehensive study, ever since the US-led invasion of 2003, estimates that Iraq could hold twice the oil as its current capacity and could double the production in five years.

The companys Iraq Atlas, to be released on 9th of May, estimates the current reserves at 116 billion barrels. IHSs study claims that there could be potential 100 billion barrels lying underneath countrys western desert. If confirmed, this would make Iraq worlds second largest oil source behind Saudi Arabia and ahead of Iran.

Ron Mobed, president and chief operating officer of HIS, said:

Iraq’s reserves are clearly phenomenal. Once the infrastructure is in place, the oil will come out of the ground quite cheaply. Geologically, it’s right up there, a gold star opportunity.

The IHS study is based on analysis of geological surveys. It used data collected in Iraq both before and after the invasion. The Iraq Atlas provides most accurate details till date of the reserves field by field. In particular it reviews:

1. All proven and in-place reserves by reservoir.
2. Estimates of remaining recoverable oil and gas reserves by reservoir by the end of 2006.
3. Location maps and structure maps for fields and prospects, along with maps of the new bidding round blocks.
4. New discoveries in Iraqi Kurdistan.
5. The Western Desert of Iraq, which is believed to be holding 100 billion barrels of oil and large amounts of gas.

IHS also said that Iraq is capable of doubling its per day output, from 2 billion barrels a day (bpd) to 4 bpd, within five years, provided that investment comes in and security situation improves. Iraq’s government has estimated that it would need $20bn-$25bn of investment from foreign companies to get production up to its full potential.

The current Oil production in Iraq is stuck at around 2 million bpd, well down on the nearly 3 million bpd hit in the final days of Saddam and even further from the 3.7 million bpd pumped in 1979, prior to the Iran-Iraq war. Of Iraqs 78 oilfields identified as commercial by the government, only 27 are currently producing. A further 25 are not yet developed but close to production, and 26 are not yet developed and are far from production.

This study, if confirmed, would be a great news coming from a country torn by the ongoing civil war. More oil reserves would certainly provide rest of the world with an added incentive to push for a quick settlement in Iraq.

Source: smh Posted by: Gagan      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:42:00 GMT

Unwinding Sarbanes-Oxley's red tape

So the regulators are rolling back Sarbanes-Oxley. What does that mean for investors long-term? And how much of of it should go?

These are some of the issues examined in Will the SEC Embrace a Softer Sarbanes-Oxley.

The piece from the Knowledge@Wharton series doesn't actually come up with definitive answers but that's to be expected, no-one really knows. But it does look at some of the issues and the dilemma regulators face of both encouraging entrepreneurs and protecting investors. And it makes the point that finding the right mix is not going to be easy.

As Wharton management professor Martin Conyon says, there was a deep distrust of organisations when Sarbanes-Oxley was signed into law in 2002. Investors had lost a fortune, people had been put out of work and retirement incomes had been vaporized. But the world has since moved on and if the demand is no longer there, it might be time to scale the legislation back. The question is whether it's against investors' interests.

Of course, the fundamental problem with Sarbanes-Oxley is Section 404 which requires companies to check their internal controls and have those checks signed off by an external auditor. In the absence of clear guidelines on what executives needed to check, companies were often forced to go to outside auditors. The result: endless and unnecessary management checks that cost the companies a fortune.

On the other hand, proponents of Sarbanes-Oxley say Section 404 has resulted in greater transparency.

Critics however say the investors haven't been paying any attention and probably don't care. The Wharton piece quotes the co-chair of the SEC advisory committee Herbert Wander who noted that investors failed to provide any feedback on whether or not to modify Section 404.

"I frankly was disappointed by the lack of professional investor comments. There were a few, but not really very many. Perhaps that's a message that we should think about - that their lack of comments may mean something."

Actually, the only thing it means is that Section 404 is probably more relevant to the people paying the bills. With corporate governance, the usual rule is that investors don't speak up until things go wrong.

That's the risk the regulators are taking. Posted by: leon      Read more     Source

April 23, 2007, 10:40 PM CT

Nanotechnology for treating spinal cord injuries

Imagine a world where damaged organs in your bodykidneys, liver, heartcan be stimulated to heal themselves. Envision people tragically paralyzed whose injured spinal cords can be repaired. Think about individuals suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinsons or Alzheimers relieved of their symptoms completely and permanently.

Dr. Samuel I. Stupp, director of the Institute of BioNanotechnology in Medicine at Northwestern University, is one of a new breed of scientists combining nanotechnology and biology to enable the body to heal itself -- and who are achieving amazing early results. Dr. Stupps work suggests that nanotechnology can be used to mobilize the bodys own healing abilities to repair or regenerate damaged cells.

In a dramatic demonstration of what nanotechnology might achieve in regenerative medicine, paralyzed lab mice with spinal cord injuries have regained the ability to walk using their hind limbs six weeks after a simple injection of a purpose-designed nanomaterial.

A video of Dr. Stupp discussing his groundbreaking research with collaborator John Kessler is available on April 24 at www.nanotechproject.org/114

"By injecting molecules that were designed to self-assemble into nanostructures in the spinal tissue, we have been able to rescue and regrow rapidly damaged neurons," said Dr. Stupp at an April 23 session hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. "The nanofibers thousands of times thinner than a human hair are the key to not only preventing the formation of harmful scar tissue which inhibits spinal cord healing, but to stimulating the body into regenerating lost or damaged cells"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 10:00 PM CT

World's most endangered cat: Amur leopard

Following the April 18 announcement that only 25 to 34 of the Amur or Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) remain in the wild, World Wildlife Fund says the number must now be revised because a female Amur leopard was killed.

Anonymous tips led officers of two leopard anti-poaching squads to the body of the leopardess on April 20 about two miles from Bamburovo village within the watershed of Alimovka River on the territory of Barsovy National Wildlife Refuge.

The next day veterinarians from the Zoological Society of London found that the 77 pound mature female leopard was shot in the back side. The bullet came through tail bone, crushed the hip bones and lodged in the belly. She was then beaten to death with a heavy object.

The killing of even one female is a huge loss for a cat on the brink of extinction, said Darron Collins, managing director of the Amur-Heilong Program, World Wildlife Fund. This years census showed a desperate situation, with just seven female Amur leopards left in the wild and four rearing cubs. Now weve lost a mature, reproductive leopardess and her potential cubs in a senseless killing. This is the third leopard killed within this area over the last five years and underscores the desperate need for a unified protected area with national park status if the leopard is to survive in the wild......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 9:54 PM CT

First European Voyage Up the Delaware

A University of Pennsylvania scholar has pinpointed 1616 as the year of the first European voyage up the Delaware River.

Jaap Jacobs, a senior fellow at Penn's McNeil Center for Early American Studies, detailed his findings in a paper, "Truffle Hunting with an Iron Hog: The First Dutch Voyage up the Delaware River," presented to the McNeil Center Seminar Series on April 20.

Scholarly discoveries tend to be the outcome of a deliberate process, but serendipity played an important role in Jacobs' discovery of the significance of a centuries-old deposition pinpointing the year of the first Dutch voyage up the Delaware.

Sometime between 1993 and 1994 while doing research for his dissertation, Jacobs copied a summary of a document he found at the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, the Amsterdam notarial archives. He said that the summary didn't indicate that the document was important, so he didn't look at the original until July 2000. At that point it became clear to him that the document referred to the Delaware River rather than the Hudson River, as he had originally thought. Years later, in 2007, while preparing his paper on early Dutch exploration of the Delaware and Hudson rivers, he revisited the historiography and realized that the document pertained to the first voyage up the Delaware by Europeans......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 9:45 PM CT

The emerging fate of the Neandertals

For nearly a century, anthropologists have been debating the relationship of Neandertals to modern humans. Central to the debate is whether Neandertals contributed directly or indirectly to the ancestry of the early modern humans that succeeded them.

As this discussion has intensified in the past decades, it has become the central research focus of Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Trinkaus has examined the earliest modern humans in Europe, including specimens in Romania, Czech Republic and France. Those specimens, in Trinkaus' opinion, have shown obvious Neandertal ancestry.

In an article appearing the week of April 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trinkaus has brought together the available data, which shows that early modern humans did exhibit evidence of Neandertal traits.

"When you look at all of the well dated and diagnostic early modern European fossils, there is a persistent presence of anatomical features that were present among the Neandertals but absent from the earlier African modern humans," Trinkaus said. "Early modern Europeans reflect both their predominant African early modern human ancestry and a substantial degree of admixture between those early modern humans and the indigenous Neandertals"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:46:59 GMT

Women Entrepreneurs: Careful, Deliberate, Prepared

My experience coaching women entrepreneurs is that they are careful, deliberate, and prepared. They are careful not to waste their own time, deliberate in following their plan(s), and well prepared to own and operate a business. For those who want to one day run their own shows, Corporate America turns out to be a pretty good training ground. The women on our list agree that their years at big companies gave them important skills they're now using as entrepreneurs. Via Business Week I found this article from Business Week interesting because it identifies not only how well prepared women entrepreneurs are, but also how different owning a small business is from Corporate America.

My response? Well duh! Posted by: Greg Balanko-Dickson      Read more     Source