Illegal music file-sharing down 'significantly'

Suzanne Choney , NBC News ? ? ? 1 hr.

Illegal music file-sharing "declined significantly," down by 17 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, according to The NPD Group.

With more services available, such as Spotify, Last.fm and Pandora for streaming and buying music, and giant digital music retailers like Amazon and Apple, consumers have more choices than ever for getting music legally, easily and relatively cheaply.

"For the music industry, which has been battling digital piracy for over a decade, last year was a year of progress," said Russ Crupnick, NPD's senior vice president of industry analysis, in a statement about the research group's findings, part of its "Annual Music Study 2012" report.

NPD's findings come on the heels of a recent report that says music sales actually saw a small gain, 0.3 percent, in 2012 to $16.5 billion, the industry's first revenue increase in 13 years, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Meanwhile, a new, U.S.-based Copyright Alert System is kicking in this week to target consumers who use peer-to-peer software to illegally share music, as well as movies and TV shows. The alert system will be used by five major Internet service providers to notify a customer whose Internet address has been detected sharing files illegally.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing peaked in 2005, NPD said, when about 20 percent of Internet users ages 13 and older used P2P services, such as LimeWire (now shut down), to download music. In 2012, "that number fell to 11 percent."

P2P services are still out there, of course. But The NPD Group notes that the volume of illegally downloaded music files from P2P sites "also declined 26 percent, compared to the previous year."

Also down: the "number of music files being burned and ripped from CDs owned by friends and family fell 44 percent, the number of files swapped from hard drives dropped 25 percent, and the volume of music downloads from digital lockers decreased 28 percent."

The NPD Group says the main reason for the reduced sharing is the "increased use of free, legal music streaming services. In fact nearly half of those who stopped or curtailed file sharing cited the use of streaming services as their primary reason for stopping or reducing their file-sharing activity."

"In recent years, we?ve seen less P2P activity, because the music industry has successfully used litigation to shut down Limewire and other services," said Crupnick. "Many of those who continued to use P2P services reported poor experiences, due to rampant spyware and viruses on illegal P2P sites."

NPD's research was based on 5,406 completed online surveys in the U.S., a spokesman told NBC News. The survey was done between Dec. 12, 2012 and Jan. 9, 2013.

Check out Technology, GadgetBox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/illegal-music-file-sharing-dropped-significantly-2012-says-npd-1C8590466

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Stephen Root joins Fox pilot "To My Future Assistant"

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - "NewsRadio" star Stephen Root, fresh from a recent turn on "Boardwalk Empire," has been cast in the Fox pilot "To My Future Assistant."

The pilot, which also cast Brittany Snow on Tuesday, is centered around a New York law office where the assistants band together to cope with their obnoxious, overbearing bosses. Catherine O'Hara, Joe Egender and Melissa Tang have also been cast.

Root will play "Frank," the stern, intense attorney who is the boss of Snow's character, "Jen." His character loads her down with chores and demeaning personal errands. But when she quits in frustration at being passed over for an associate lawyer job, he offers some surprisingly sound advice.

Root also played a challenging boss on five seasons of "NewsRadio": micromanaging billionaire station owner Jimmy James.

On "Boardwalk Empire," Root played the elegant con artist Gaston Means. He has also had recent turns on "Justified" and "The Good Wife."

Root will be seen on the big screen in Jacob Vaughan's "Milo," opposite Ken Marino and Gillian Jacobs, which will premiere at SXSW next month, and in Robert Redford's "The Company You Keep," with Redford and Shia LaBeouf.

"To My Future Assistant" is written and executive produced by Sherry Bilsing-Graham and Ellen Kreamer, and executive produced by Jen Gwartz and Dan Lin. It comes from Lin Pictures and Warner Bros. TV.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stephen-root-joins-fox-pilot-future-assistant-190311992.html

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International Business Association ? Pulsera Project Sale @ Alter ...

Home ?About Fox ? Events ? International Business Association ? Pulsera Project Sale @ Alter Hall Lobby

Monday, February 27th, 2013 at 11:00am-3:00pm
Pulsera Project Sale

This Monday and Wednesday, IBA will be selling Pulsera Project bracelets and headbands. The Pulsera Project, a non-profit organization, uses all proceeds to support youth shelters, fund scholarships, provide loans, and run community development projects in Nicaragua. Don?t miss out on supporting this great cause by purchasing a colorful Pulsera bracelet or headband; which will serve as a constant reminder of the numerous Nicaraguans you have helped.

For questions please contact Aundrea George at iba.publicrelations@temple.edu

Add to Outlook or iCal| | Share This Event

Source: https://www.fox.temple.edu/posts/2013/02/international-business-association-pulsera-project-sale-alter-hall-lobby-2/

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Orders jump for key US long-lasting factory goods

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Orders for U.S. factory goods that signal business investment plans jumped last month by the most in more than a year, suggesting companies are confident about their business prospects.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for so-called core capital goods, which include industrial machinery, construction equipment and computers, rose 6.3 percent in January from December. A sharp fall in demand for commercial aircraft caused overall durable goods orders to drop 5.2 percent, the first decline since August.

Orders for commercial aircraft are volatile from month to month and can cause large swings in the overall figure. Boeing reported orders for only two planes in January, down from 183 in December. Orders for defense equipment also plummeted by the most in more than 12 years.

Durable goods are items expected to last at least three years.

The increase in core capital goods suggests companies are willing to expand their production capacities despite worries that automatic government spending cuts will slow the economy in the coming months.

"The fact remains that capital spending appears to be holding up very well," Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG, a brokerage firm. "In fact, it appears to be accelerating."

Still, the jump in orders wasn't broad-based and occurred mostly in machinery and manufactured metal products. Orders for computers and communications equipment both fell and orders for autos and auto parts were unchanged.

About $85 billion in spending cuts are scheduled to kick in Friday and there is little sign that the White House and Congress will reach a deal to avoid them. Defense Department officials may have slowed purchases in January in anticipation of the cutbacks.

Business investment plans have held up in recent months despite the uncertainty surrounding tax and spending policies. Core capital goods orders dipped 0.3 percent in December but posted strong gains of 3.3 percent in November and 3 percent in October.

The report suggests U.S. manufacturing is strengthening. The Institute for Supply Management said earlier this month that factory activity grew in January at the fastest pace in nine months. Measures of new orders and hiring both rose.

But industrial production fell in January after two months of increases, the Federal Reserve said. Much of the decline reflected a big drop in auto production that was likely temporary. The auto industry is coming off its best year for sales in five years. Sales continue to rise, so production will likely rebound in February.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-27-US-Durable-Goods/id-524da65e0dd24d6cbfde6ca466455ded

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With $15M From Norwest, Battery, DFJ & More, StellaService Is On A ...

StellaService, a startup that measures and benchmarks the customer service performance of online businesses, announced this morning that it has raised $15 million in series B financing. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with contributions from the startup?s existing investors, including Battery Ventures, DFJ Gotham Ventures, RRE Ventures and Forerunner Ventures and brings the startup?s total to $22 million.

For those unfamiliar, StellaService aims to help shoppers identify which online businesses have the best (and worst) customer service and, in turn, to assist merchants in improving their current offerings. The company has developed a nationwide network of anonymous, embedded (and paid) mystery shoppers to help evaluate the quality of customer service across online commerce. StellaService also does some shopping of its own, paying companies for the products they offer to consumers and employing its own team of analysts to measure quality both of the product itself and the service they provide.

The company evaluates the quality of customer service as the ?sum of all interactions between shoppers and online retailers that contribute to the overall customer experience,? assessing both the service and the system, focusing particularly on ?usability, features and policy,? ?shipping, delivery and returns? and ?customer support.? Once the team has run its own tests, it combines its own findings with those of its ?mystery shoppers? to create a rating for each business, which range from ?elite? and ?excellent? to, well, not-so-excellent.

The startup?s evaluation process differs for each category, and in a way, may appear to be somewhat subjective. But the StellaService founders tell us that its evaluation process is audited annually by KPMG, and it does not accept payments from companies for ratings ? and, again, it uses its own funds to purchase the products that it evaluates.

The companies that receive top ratings, like ?elite? or ?excellent,? for example, (which are less than 50 percent of the thousands of companies it has rated, the founders tell us) are then eligible to receive StellaService?s ?seal of approval,? which they can then display on their websites. For a fee, brands can take advantage of StellaService?s seal and get access to the data compiled by its team.

In essence, the startup wants to be the largest independent auditor of customer service companies (calling, ordering, returning, tweeting, etc.) and, in turn, provide what it believes to be the ?only independent trustmark? that identifies best-in-class customer support.

Over the last year, the company has built and developed Stella Metrics, a data platform dedicated to monitoring and benchmarking every touch point of the online customer experience, which, up to this point, has only been deployed to a few charter partners, including some of the largest U.S. retailers, the founders tell us.

Since its inception, brands like 1800Flowers, Zappos, Wine.com, 1800Contacts, GNC and Gilt Groupe have won the company?s seal of approval and, since we covered the startup?s $5 million series A raise at the end of 2011, the startup has added a handful of well-known brands to the list, including Eddie Bauer, One Kings Lane and Totsy, to name a few ? each of which are using StellaMetrics.

The company produced 3.9 million data points on the service performance of these online retailers in 2012 and launched a number of case studies (with 15 additional retailers) that showed a ?significant increase in sales? achieved by those companies displaying the StellaService seal, company co-founder and CEO Jordy Leiser said. 1800Contacts saw an 8.7 percent reduction in bounce and Wayfair saw a 4.5 percent lift in conversion once they implemented the seal, for example.

Now, with 12 months of building and testing behind it, today the company is officially making its SaaS platform available to the masses, for a fee. The cost will differ from company-to-company, based on the size, their particular needs, and so on. The idea is to give any retailer or online store an objective window through which to view not only their own service performance, but that of competitors at well. So, for example, Target can now get a glimpse into how their CSRs handle a particular question compared to, say, Walmart ? and vice versa.

As of today, StellaService has about 700 seal partners (those who are displaying their ?elite? or ?excellent? customer service status, and currently only 5 percent of brands are qualified as ?elite,? he says), but the company evaluates thousands of brands, even if they don?t participate directly in the service. The startup?s newest round of capital was raised in an effort to help deploy and scale Stella Metrics nationally, expand coverage, and beef up its staff to be able to work more closely with clients to identify competitive advantages and problem areas within their customer service.

?We?ve seen a huge shift in the way retailers see and think about customer service and its impact on business results now that they?re armed with a new level of data and insight,? says Leiser. ?With our new momentum and fresh fuel, we?re focused on building a massive, meaningful business, and with that goal in mind, we?re investing heavily in our research and client services teams to help retailers quickly understand a data set that has never been available before.?

For more on StellaService, find them at home here.

STELLAService measures, benchmarks, and evaluates online customer service. STELLAService evaluates and rates businesses based on the overall quality of the online customer experience.

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/with-15m-from-norwest-battery-dfj-more-stellaservice-is-building-an-independent-ranking-system-for-customer-service/

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Syrian forces clash with rebels around Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) ? Anti-regime activists say Syrian rebels are clashing with government forces on two sides of the northern city of Aleppo as well as near its historic mosque.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least six rebels were killed in fighting Wednesday near a police academy west of the city and clashes also raged on a key supply road leading to the southeast part of the city.

The Observatory also says rebel and regime forces controlled different parts of the 12th century Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo's walled city.

Syria's largest city, Aleppo, has been a key battleground in the civil war since rebels entered the city in July 2012.

The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed since Syria's civil war started in March 2011.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-forces-clash-rebels-around-aleppo-125319092.html

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Rosa Parks honored with statue at Capitol

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama and congressional leaders unveiled a full-length statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in the Capitol Wednesday, paying tribute to a figure whose name became synonymous with courage in the face of injustice.

Parks becomes the first black woman to be honored with a full-length statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. A bust of another black woman, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, sits in the Capitol Visitors Center.

Obama said that with the installation of the statue, Parks, who died in 2005, has taken her rightful place among those who have shaped the course of U.S. history. He said her presence in Capitol would serve to "remind us no matter how humble or lofty our positions, just what it is that leadership requires."

Obama and House Speaker John Boehner jointly led the unveiling, standing with the statue between them as they grasped and pulled in opposite directions on the braided cord that held the covering. Congressional leaders in the House and Senate joined Parks' niece in tugging on the cord.

"We do well by placing a statue of her here," Obama said, "but we can do no greater honor to her memory than to carry forward the power of her principle and a courage born of conviction."

U.S. President Barack Obama (C) applauds after the unveiling of the Rosa Parks statue in the U.S. Capitol in Washington February 27, 2013. (From L-R) are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House ... more? U.S. President Barack Obama (C) applauds after the unveiling of the Rosa Parks statue in the U.S. Capitol in Washington February 27, 2013. (From L-R) are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker John Boehner and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) less?

The statue portrays Parks seated, wearing a hat and clutching her trademark purse ? "a permanent reminder of the cause she embodied," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The several hundred lawmakers, family and congressional staff who gathered for the ceremony in the vaulted hall rose to their feet and whooped as Boehner opened the ceremony.

"Here in the hall, she casts an unlikely silhouette ? unassuming in a lineup of proud stares, challenging all of us once more to look up and to draw strength from stillness," said Boehner, R-Ohio.

Parks is famous for her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in Alabama to a white man, but there's plenty about the rest of her experiences that she deliberately withheld from her family.

While Parks and her husband, Raymond, were childless, her brother, the late Sylvester McCauley, had 13 children. They decided Parks' nieces and nephews didn't need to know the horrible details surrounding her civil rights activism, said Rhea McCauley, Parks' niece.

"They didn't talk about the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws," said McCauley, 61, of Orlando, Fla. "They didn't talk about that stuff to us kids. Everyone wanted to forget about it and sweep it under the rug."

He said more than 50 of Parks' relatives traveled to Washington for the ceremony.

In a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in segregated Montgomery, Ala. She was arrested, touching off a bus boycott that stretched over a year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Parks had "moved the world when she refused to move her seat."

Jeanne Theoharis, author of the new biography "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," said Parks was very much a full-fledged civil rights activist, yet her contributions have not been treated like those of other movement leaders, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Rosa Parks is typically honored as a woman of courage, but that honor focuses on the one act she made on the bus on Dec. 5, 1955," said Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York.

"That courage, that night was the product of decades of political work before that and continued ... decades after" in Detroit, she said.

Parks died Oct. 24, 2005, at age 92. The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor on Feb. 4, which would have been her 100th birthday.

Parks was raised by her mother and grandparents who taught her that part of being respected was to demand respect, said Theoharis, who spent six years researching and writing the Parks biography.

She was an educated woman who recalled seeing her grandfather sitting on the porch steps with a gun during the height of white violence against blacks in post-World War I Alabama.

After she married Raymond Parks, she joined him in his work in trying to help nine young black men, ages 12 to 19, who were accused of raping two white women in 1931. The nine were later convicted by an all-white jury in Scottsboro, Ala., part of a long legal odyssey for the so-called Scottsboro Boys.

In the 1940s, Parks joined the NAACP and was elected secretary of its Montgomery, Ala., branch, working with civil rights activist Edgar Nixon to fight barriers to voting for blacks and investigate sexual violence against women, Theoharis said.

Just five months before refusing to give up her seat, Parks attended Highlander Folk School, which trained community organizers on issues of poverty but had begun turning its attention to civil rights.

After the bus boycott, Parks and her husband lost their jobs and were threatened. They left for Detroit, where Parks was an activist against the war in Vietnam and worked on poverty, housing and racial justice issues, Theoharis said.

Theoharis said that while she considers the 9-foot-statue of Parks in the Capitol an "incredible honor" for Parks, "I worry about putting this history in the past when the actual Rosa Parks was working on and calling on us to continue to work on racial injustice."

Parks has been honored previously in Washington with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, both during the Clinton administration.

But McCauley said the Statuary Hall honor is different.

"The medal you could take it, put it on a mantel," McCauley said. "But her being in the hall itself is permanent and children will be able to tour the (Capitol) and look up and see my aunt's face."

___

Associated Press writer Mark S. Smith contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rosa-parks-statue-unveiled-capitol-165811836.html

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Guardly First In Mobile Safety To Offer Indoor Positioning System To Aid In Emergency Response

Toronto-based Guardly announced today the launch of its indoor positioning system (IPS) tech, adding more specificity and heightened capabilities in environments like office buildings to their mobile safety solution. The startup, which provides mobile safety apps for smartphone devices, and the infrastructure to support it for enterprise, education and other organizations, says its new IPS tech means it can not only show the rough geographic location of someone in danger, but also transmit information such as the specific floor they're on or even what room they're in if they're within a building.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5XtDziV79X0/

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Senate panel likely to vote this week on CIA pick

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says she expects the panel to vote later this week on the nomination of John Brennan to be director of the CIA.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Monday the White House has agreed to provide the committee with information about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Republicans had demanded the records as a condition of moving forward with Brennan's confirmation.

But Feinstein said the Obama administration has not responded to the committee's request for more details about the classified legal opinions that justify using unmanned spy planes to kill al-Qaida suspects overseas, including American citizens.

Feinstein said she anticipates the committee will vote Thursday on Brennan's nomination.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-25-Brennan-CIA/id-5f71235239f84cd0a34d3e0458254ef8

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Andy Samberg Is Engaged To Joanna Newsom ?Like A Boss!? (Photos)

Andy Samberg Is Engaged To Joanna Newsom “Like A Boss!” (Photos)

“Saturday Night Live” alum Andy Samberg is getting hitched! Samberg, 34, has confirmed that he is engaged to his girlfriend of five years, singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom!

Andy Samberg Is Engaged To Joanna Newsom “Like A Boss!” (Photos) Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/02/andy-samberg-is-engaged-to-joanna-newsom-like-a-boss-photos/

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Museum of Broadcast Communication Hosts WLS National Barn ...

The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) will celebrate the 89th anniversary of The National Barn Dance radio show in the actual historic WLS studio on March 23 at 3pm. The special event will feature an afternoon of classic country music, historic reflections and documentary clips from The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance.Filmmaker Stephen Parry will host the anniversary celebration that will benefit The National Radio Hall of Fame, which is housed inside the MBC.

In 1924, The National Barn Dance made its debut over WLS Radio/Chicago. The show was the first to blend folk and country music with rural humor. The legendary Gene Autry, Pat Buttram, George Gobel, Andy Williams and Eddie Peabody were all regular members of the shows cast The National Barn Dance rapidly grew in popularity and was the idea behind Nashvilles Grand Ole Opry.

Duke Miglin, current building owner and noted Chicago developer, is making the space available for the celebration. The historic studio will soon be transformed into office space.

Celebration attendees will receive a limited edition poster commemorating the 89th anniversary of The National Barn Dance. The program was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2011.

WLS Radio is a promotional sponsor of the celebration. Rubschlager Baking Corporation is an event sponsor and will provide light refreshments.

Stephen Parry is the writer/producer of the PBS documentary The Hayloft Gang that chronicles the history of the WLS National Barn Dance. Highlights of the documentary will be presented.

Seminar speakers include:

• Scott Childers, radio personality, author of the book - Chicagos WLS Radio and host of - The History of WLS website.
• James F. Evans retired farm broadcaster, educator and author of Prairie Farmer and WLS: The Burridge D. Butler Years.
• Paul Tylermusician, folklorist and historian with the Old Town School of Folk Music and author of the lead essay in the book The Hayloft Gang; Tyler will also perform live.
• David Wyle historian of The National Barn Danceand early station history and contributor to The Hayloft Gang.
• Stephen Parry writer and producer of The Hayloft Gang, will moderate the discussion.

Attendees will receive a limited edition poster commemorating the 89th Anniversary the WLS National Barn Dance.

Saturday, March 23, 2013, at 3 p.m. Tickets are $89 each and can be purchased here or by phone at 312-624-8010. (Limited Seating). 1230 W Washington Blvd, Chicago, IL 60607. The site of the historic WLS radio studio where the National Barn Dance once originated.

Source: http://www.cybergrass.com/node/2294

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Scientists' findings disclose a new and much needed test for river blindness infection

Scientists' findings disclose a new and much needed test for river blindness infection

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a telltale molecular marker for Onchocerciasis or "river blindness," a parasitic infection that affects tens of millions of people in Africa, Latin America and other tropical regions. The newly discovered biomarker, detectable in patients' urine, is secreted by Onchocerca volvulus worms during an active infection. The biomarker could form the basis of a portable, field-ready test with significant advantages over current diagnostic methods.

"There has been a need for an inexpensive, non-invasive test that can discriminate between active and non-active river blindness infections during treatment campaigns," said Kim D. Janda, who is Professor and Ely R. Callaway, Jr. Chair in Chemistry, member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, and director of the Worm Institute of Research and Medicine at TSRI. "We think that this new biomarker can be the basis for such a test."

The work is described in an online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of February 25, 2013.

Leading Cause of Vision Loss

A leading cause of vision loss, Onchocerciasis infections are transmitted among humans by river-dwelling blackflies in tropical regions. The vast majority of cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa, although pockets of endemic infection exist in Yemen and in Central and South America. The major symptoms of the disease, including blindness, result from the spread of O. volvulus "microfilariae"?early-stage larval worms?to the eyes and other tissues, where they trigger damaging inflammatory reactions.

Mass treatment campaigns, begun in the 1990s, have used the anti-worm drug ivermectin, as well as the antibiotic doxycycline, which kills a symbiotic bacterium within the worms. The World Health Organization's African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control has set a target date of 2025 for the eradication of the disease in that region. But Onchocerciasis treatment is seldom effective immediately and often spares adult worms. The latter can remain in protected nodules under the skin of a patient and secrete microfilaria for a decade or more. Health agencies need better diagnostic methods not only to monitor the progress of Onchocerciasis treatment campaigns, but also to limit the use of ivermectin and doxycycline to reduce the risk of resistance.

Current diagnostic methods include the painful cutting of "skin snips" from patients for microscopic analysis and an ELISA antibody test for microfilariae, which may yield positive results even for non-active infections. "You can still have circulating antibodies to a nemotode antigen in your blood for a long time after the infection is gone," said Janda.

Looking for a Better Way

A better diagnostic marker would be a metabolite of O. volvulus that appears only during an active, microfilariae-producing infection and that could determine both the presence and the severity of disease. In 2010, Janda's laboratory demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by sifting through the small-molecule metabolites within blood samples from river blindness patients?a technique called "metabolome mining"?and finding a set linked to active onchocerciasis infection. For the new study, the team sought a simpler set of biomarkers?or better yet, a single unique biomarker in urine.

Daniel Globisch, a postdoctoral fellow in the Janda laboratory, started with samples of urine from onchocerciasis-infected and non-infected Africans. Using a powerful laboratory technique called liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, he measured the concentrations of hundreds of small-molecule metabolites in the samples. Excitingly, between the infected and non-infected urine samples, one difference stood out clearly: "An unknown small molecule was highly elevated in the samples from infected individuals," said Globisch.

In a process akin to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, Globisch was able to purify the mysterious metabolite, and, using mass spectrometry, determine the chemical identities of its individual pieces. "The metabolite itself wasn't present in the databases, so I searched the literature for what is known about the biosynthesis and metabolic pathways in these nematodes," Globisch said. Ultimately, he was able to identify the metabolite as N-acetyltyramine-O,?-glucuronide. Remarkably, this molecule's inception can be traced to O. volvulus as a neurotransmitter molecule that is secreted by young, reproducing worms and then modified by the human body on its way to being excreted in urine.

"It's a spectacular find in terms of biomarkers as it does not occur naturally in humans," Globisch said. Levels of the metabolite in a non-infected North American control sample were near zero.

Toward a Field Test

In urine samples from Africans with active onchocerciasis infections, Globisch found that levels of the biomarker were on average four to six times higher than in samples from Africans with non-active infections. In a separate test, the team determined that a full course of doxycycline treatment, which sterilizes or kills infecting worms by destroying their symbiotic bacteria, also reduced levels of the biomarker to near-normal. "This biomarker appears to be specific for an active infection," Globisch said. The wide gap between biomarker levels in active and non-active infections suggests that a field test based on the biomarker would be robustly useful.

Such a diagnostic, said Janda, might ultimately be a simple urine dipstick test, much like a home pregnancy test, which would indicate the amount of the O. volvulus biomarker present in the sample. "Ultimately for this to be of value in Third World countries we will need to morph this biomarker into something that's inexpensive, simple to use, tolerant of extreme temperatures and portable?basically distilling our finding to a test that can be carted around in a backpack," Janda said.

Importantly, he adds that Globisch's metabolome-mining approach in theory should be applicable to the development of diagnostic tests for other worm diseases.

###

Scripps Research Institute: http://www.scripps.edu

Thanks to Scripps Research Institute for this article.

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

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127013/Scientists__findings_disclose_a_new_and_much_needed_test_for_river_blindness_infection

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Oscars Red Carpet: The Best Moments You Didn't See

MTV News' memorable run-ins with Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence and other A-listers — with co-host Al Roker?
By Josh Horowitz

Kristen Stewart at the 2013 Oscars
Photo: Getty Images

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702524/oscars-2013-red-carpet-best-moments.jhtml

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Deal of the Day ? Dell Inspiron 15R 3rd Gen Core i7 Dual-core laptop with 8GB RAM and 1TB Hard Drive

LogicBUY’s Deal for Tuesday is the configurable?15.6″ Dell Inspiron 15R 5521 Core i7 Ivy Bridge laptop for $649.99. ?Features: 3rd-gen Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPU 8GB RAM 1TB 5400RPM hard drive, 8X DVD burner, 8-in-1 card reader Intel HD 4000 graphics Four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI v1.4a output 1MP webcam with mic Waves MaxxAudio?4 15-months [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/02/26/deal-of-the-day-dell-inspiron-15r-3rd-gen-core-i7-dual-core-laptop-with-8gb-ram-and-1tb-hard-drive/

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Powers to offer Iran sanctions relief at nuclear talks

ALMATY (Reuters) - Major powers will offer Iran some sanctions relief during talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this week if Tehran agrees to curb its nuclear program, a U.S. official said on Monday.

But the Islamic Republic could face more economic pain if it fails to address international concerns about its atomic activities, the official said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the central Asian state, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"There will be continued sanctions enforcement ... there are other areas where pressure can be put," the official said, on the eve of the first round of negotiations between Iran and six world powers in eight months.

A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who leads the talks with Iran on behalf of the powers, said Tehran should understand that there was an "urgent need to make concrete and tangible progress" in Kazakhstan.

Both Russia and the United States stressed there was not an unlimited amount of time to resolve a dispute that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East.

"The window for a diplomatic solution simply cannot by definition remain open forever. But it is open today. It is open now," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in London.

"There is still time but there is only time if Iran makes the decision to come to the table and negotiate in good faith," he added in a news conference in London. "We are prepared to negotiate in good faith, in mutual respect, in an effort to avoid whatever terrible consequences could follow failure."

It was not clear what he meant by "terrible consequences." Top U.S. officials have repeatedly said the United States will not take any options off the table, code for the possibility of a military strike. They also fear Iran's getting a nuclear weapon could set off an arms race across the Middle East.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said there was "no more time to waste", Interfax news agency quoted him as saying in Almaty.

The immediate priority for the powers - the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France - is to convince Iran to halt its higher-grade enrichment, which is a relatively short technical step away from potential atom bomb material.

Iran, which has taken steps over the last year to expand its uranium enrichment activities in defiance of international demands to scale it back, wants a relaxation of increasingly harsh sanctions hurting its lifeline oil exports.

Western officials say the Almaty meeting is unlikely to produce any major breakthrough, in part because Iran's presidential election in June may make it difficult for it to make significant concessions before then for domestic reasons.

But they say they hope that Iran will take their proposals seriously and engage in negotiations to try to find a diplomatic settlement.

"No one is expecting to walk out of here with a deal but ... confidence building measures are important," one senior Western official said.

The stakes are high: Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed arsenal, has strongly hinted at possible military action to prevent its old foe from obtaining such arms. Iran has threatened to retaliate if attacked.

GOLD SANCTIONS RELIEF?

The U.S. official said the powers' updated offer to Iran - a modified version of one rejected by Iran in the unsuccessful talks last year - would take into account its recent nuclear advances, but also take "some steps in the sanctions arena".

This would be aimed at addressing some of Iran's concerns, the official said, while making clear it would not meet Tehran's demand of an easing of all punitive steps against it.

"We think ... there will be some additional sanctions relief" in the powers' revised proposal," the official said, without giving details.

Western diplomats have told Reuters the six countries will offer to ease sanctions on trade in gold and precious metals if Iran closes its Fordow underground uranium enrichment plant.

Iran has indicated, however, that this will not be enough.

Tehran denies Western allegations it is seeking to develop the capability to make nuclear bombs, saying its program is entirely peaceful. It wants the powers to recognize what it sees as its right to refine uranium for peaceful purposes.

The U.S. official said the powers hoped that the Almaty meeting would lead to follow-up talks soon.

"We are ready to step up the pace of our meetings and our discussions," the official said, adding the United States would also be prepared to hold bilateral talks with Tehran if it was serious about it.

Ashton's spokesman, Michael Mann, said the updated offer to Iran was "balanced and a fair basis" for constructive talks.

(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Dimitry Solovyov and by Arshad Mohammed and Mohammed Abbas in London; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/major-powers-offer-iran-sanctions-relief-nuclear-talks-125535303.html

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Ikea withdraws meatballs in more than 20 countries

Advertising for Ikea meat balls at the parking area at an Ikea store in Malmo Sweden Monday Feb. 25, 2012. Furniture retailer Ikea says it has halted all sales of meat balls in Sweden after Czech authorities detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. (AP Photo/Johannes Cleris) SWEDEN OUT

Advertising for Ikea meat balls at the parking area at an Ikea store in Malmo Sweden Monday Feb. 25, 2012. Furniture retailer Ikea says it has halted all sales of meat balls in Sweden after Czech authorities detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. (AP Photo/Johannes Cleris) SWEDEN OUT

FILE - In this April 27, 2006 file photo, an exterior view of the Ikea furniture store in Duisburg, western Germany. The Czech veterinary authority said Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 it detected horse meat in meat balls labeled as beef and pork imported to the country by Sweden's furniture retailer giant Ikea. The State Veterinary Administration says the one-kilogram packs of the frozen meat balls were made in Sweden to be sold in Ikea's furniture stores that also offer typical Swedish food. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2012 file photo, a sign bearing the Ikea logo is seen outside a store in Berlin. The Czech veterinary authority said Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 it detected horse meat in meat balls labeled as beef and pork imported to the country by Sweden's furniture retailer giant Ikea. The State Veterinary Administration says the one-kilogram packs of the frozen meat balls were made in Sweden to be sold in Ikea's furniture stores that also offer typical Swedish food. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Advertising for Ikea meat balls at the parking area at an Ikea store in Malmo Sweden Monday Feb. 25, 2012. Furniture retailer Ikea says it has halted all sales of meat balls in Sweden after Czech authorities detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. (AP Photo/Johannes Cleris) SWEDEN OUT

STOCKHOLM (AP) ? Swedish furniture giant Ikea became entangled in Europe's widening meat scandal Monday, forced to withdraw meatballs from stores across Europe amid suspicions that they contained horse meat.

Stores in the U.S. and Canada were not affected, Ikea said.

The company reacted after authorities in the Czech Republic said they had detected horse DNA in tests of 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) packs of frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. The Czech State Veterinary Administration said it tested two batches of Ikea meatballs and only one of them contained horse meat. It did not say how much.

Meatballs from the same batch had been sent from a Swedish supplier to 12 other European countries ? Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland ? and would be pulled off the shelves in all of them, Ikea said.

Later Monday, the company expanded the withdrawals to stores in 21 European countries and in Hong Kong, Thailand and the Dominican Republic, all of which were getting meatballs from the same Swedish supplier.

Ikea spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson said that included most European countries, but not Russia and Norway, which use local suppliers. Stores in Poland and Switzerland use both local suppliers and the Swedish one, but would now only use locally produced meatballs, she said.

"This is an extraordinary effort to ensure that no one is worried," Magnusson told The Associated Press.

She added that two weeks ago Ikea tested a range of frozen food products, including meatballs, and found no traces of horse meat. The company plans to conduct its own tests to "validate" the Czech results, she said.

Ikea's North America branch said the U.S. stores get their meatballs from a U.S. supplier.

"Based on the results of our mapping, we can confirm that the contents of the meatballs follow the Ikea recipe and contain only beef and pork from animals raised in the U.S. and Canada," Ikea North America spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss said in a statement.

Ikea is known for its assemble-it-yourself furniture but its trademark blue-and-yellow megastores also have cafeteria-style restaurants offering Swedish dishes such as meatballs served with boiled or mashed potatoes, gravy and lingonberry jam.

European Union officials met Monday to discuss tougher food labeling rules after the discovery of horse meat in a wide range of frozen supermarket meals that were supposed to contain beef or pork. So far those foods include meatballs, burgers, kebabs, lasagna, pizza, tortelloni, ravioli, empanadas and meat pies, among other items.

Authorities say the scandal is a case of fraudulent labeling but does not pose a health risk.

Gunnar Dafgard AB, a family-owned frozen foods company in southwestern Sweden that supplies Ikea's meatballs in Europe, posted a brief statement on its website saying "the batch in question has been blocked and we are investigating the situation."

Spokesman Ola Larsson said the company was conducting its own DNA tests and wouldn't comment further until it has those results.

Sweden's food safety authority said it wasn't taking any action but was waiting for Czech authorities to specify the quantity of horsemeat detected.

"If it's less than 1 percent it could mean that they handled horsemeat at the same facility. If it's more, we assess that it's been mixed into the product," said Karin Cerenius of Sweden's National Food Agency.

The Czech authority said a total of 760 kilograms (1,675 pounds) of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves. It also said it found horse meat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products.

"Unfortunately, the testing method we use detects just the quality ... the presence or non-presence of horse DNA," said Jan Vana, a senior official at the State Veterinary Administration. "At the moment, we can't say the quantity of it."

Spanish authorities, meanwhile, announced that traces of horse meat were found in a beef cannelloni product by one of the brands of Nestle, a Switzerland-based food giant.

In a statement on its website, Nestle Spain said it was withdrawing six "La Cocinera" products and one "Buitoni" product from store shelves. It said it was taking the action after traces of horse meat were found in beef bought from a supplier in Spain and that it was taking legal action against the company.

Processed food products ? a business segment with traditionally low margins that often leads producers to hunt for the cheapest suppliers ? often contain ingredients from multiple suppliers in different countries, who themselves at times subcontract production to others, making it hard to monitor every link in the production chain.

Standardized DNA checks with meat suppliers or more stringent labeling rules on disclosing the origin of processed food's ingredients will add costs that producers will most likely hand over to consumers, making food more expensive.

The scandal has created a split in the European Union between nations like Britain, which see further rules as a protectionist hindrance of free trade under the 27-nation bloc's single market, and those calling for tougher regulation, including Austria and Germany.

"Consumers have every right to the greatest-possible transparency," German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said.

At the meeting in Brussels, several EU agriculture ministers called upon the Commission, the bloc's executive arm, to speed up presenting a proposal on tougher regulation by this summer.

The scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by the British supermarket kingpin Tesco had more than 25 percent horse meat.

___

Associated Press writers Juergen Baetz in Brussels, Karel Janicek in Prague and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-25-Europe-Horse%20Meat/id-d7ba75f87b6b4e54bd9acaf588a516f3

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Bell Canada set to launch Novatel's MiFi 2

Novatel's touchable MiFi 2 -- also known as the MiFi Liberate -- receives a fresh coat of paint in the form of a UI overhaul on its way to Bell Canada's network this March. No word on pricing or an exact date, but this 11-hour-lasting king of all portable access points is $50 on a two-year agreement on AT&T, so we'd hazard that sets a decent watermark on the potential price. No word on what the new UI tweaks entail but we're angling to get our hands on one some time this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/24/bell-canada-set-to-launch-novatels-mifi-2/

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Distinct niches in bone marrow nurture blood stem cells

Monday, February 25, 2013

In research that could one day improve the success of stem cell transplants and chemotherapy, scientists have found that distinct niches exist in bone marrow to nurture different types of blood stem cells.

Stem cells in the blood are the precursors to infection-fighting white blood cells and oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

The research, by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is reported Feb. 24 in the advance online edition of Nature.

The new findings, in mice, suggest that it may be possible to therapeutically target support cells in a particular niche. On the one hand, a drug that nourishes support cells could encourage blood stem cells to establish themselves in the bone marrow, enabling patients who have had stem cell transplants to more quickly rebuild their immune systems.

On the other, tumor cells are known to hide in the bone marrow, and a drug that disrupts the niche environment may drive cancer cells into the bloodstream, where they are more vulnerable to the damaging effects of chemotherapy.

"Our results offer hope for targeting these niches to treat specific cancers or to improve the success of stem cell transplants," says senior author Daniel Link, MD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Medicine. "Already, we and others are leading clinical trials to evaluate whether it is possible to disrupt these niches in patients with leukemia or multiple myeloma."

Working in the mice, the researchers selectively deleted a critical gene, CXCL12, which is known to be important for keeping blood stem cells healthy. Rather than knock out the gene in all of the support cells in a niche, the researchers deleted the gene in specific types of support cells. This led to the discovery that each niche holds only certain blood stem cells that are nourished by a unique set of support cells.

"What we found was rather surprising," Link says. "There's not just one niche for developing blood cells in the bone marrow. There's a distinct niche for stem cells, which have the ability to become any blood cell in the body, and a separate niche for infection-fighting blood cells that are destined to become T cells and B cells."

The findings provide a strong foundation for investigating whether disrupting these niches can improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

In a phase II pilot study led by Washington University medical oncologist Geoffrey Uy, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Link is evaluating whether the drug G-CSF can alter the stem cell niche in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia whose cancer has recurred or is resistant to treatment. The drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago to stimulate production of white blood cells in patients undergoing chemotherapy, who often have weakened immune systems and are prone to infections.

But Uy and colleagues will evaluate the drug when it is given before chemotherapy. Patients enrolled in the trial at the Siteman Cancer Center will receive G-CSF for five days before chemotherapy, and the investigators will determine whether it can disrupt the protective environment of the bone marrow niche and make cancer cells more sensitive to chemotherapy.

While it's too early to know whether the treatment approach will be successful, Link's new research in mice is bolstered by a companion paper in the same issue of Nature. In that research, Sean Morrison, PhD, director of the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, used similar molecular methods to also discover distinct niches in the bone marrow for blood stem cells.

"There's a lot of interest right now in trying to understand these niches," Link adds. "Both of these studies add new information that will be important as we move forward. Next, we hope to understand how stem cell niches can be manipulated to help patients undergoing stem cell transplants."

###

Greenbaum A, Hsu Y-MS, Day RB, Schuettpelz LG, Christopher MJ, Borgerding JN, Nagasawa T, Link DC. CXCL12 production by early mesenchymal progenitors is required for haemoatopoietic stem-cell maintenance. Nature. Advance online publication Feb. 24, 2013.

Washington University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.wustl.edu

Thanks to Washington University School of Medicine for this article.

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

This press release has been viewed 36 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126999/Distinct_niches_in_bone_marrow_nurture_blood_stem_cells

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Boston Marathon Runner Climbs Hills In Fight To Cure Cancer

MILFORD, Mass. ? Jamie Gornstein Tighe wakes up at 4:30 a.m. on weekdays and immediately hops on a treadmill. On Saturdays, she gets to sleep in until 6 a.m. before heading out in to the cold and running 10 to 20 miles. But it could be worse.

?Long runs are hard, but it?s not chemo,? said Tighe, a Franklin resident. ?When I?m done, I?ll be sore and I won?t be able to walk for a day or two. But people going through cancer won?t have that luxury. They?re going through an extremely painful experience.

?I just tell myself to suck it up ? you?re not going through cancer."

Tighe doesn?t consider herself a true runner. But in April, she?ll be running her second Boston Marathon with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team. Every dollar she raises supports the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research, which funds the ?brightest, most creative scientists making basic research discoveries.?

In 2011, Tighe raised more than $12,000 in memory of her close friend Andy Swan, who died at age 35 from Stage IV lung cancer.

?Andy was a non-smoker and in excellent health,? she said. ?This diagnosis came completely out of left field. And he died 10 months after diagnosis, leaving behind his wife and 4-year-old son. He was a filmmaker with a bright future, and it was such a devastating blow.

?His father is now battling prostate cancer and is also being treated by Dana-Farber. This year I am running in Andy?s memory and in honor of Bob, Andy?s father. My goal is just shy of $13,000, as I want to raise $25,000 for my two marathons.?

Tighe said she has already raised more than $6,500 on Facebook, and she is organizing a fundraiser for April 6 with current and former players from the Patriots and Celtics. The fundraiser is tentatively planned for 3 to 6 p.m. at CJ?s in Framingham.

?I have every confidence that people will help me get to that goal,? she said. ?I?m hoping every little bit adds up, and I can reach that goal of $12,880.?

Tighe, who has daughters in second and sixth grades, is a special needs job coach at Medway High School. As a result, her only time to train is before the sun comes up.

?You do what you got to do,? she said. ?That?s part of being a mom and working. But it?s such an important cause, and the time has to go in. It?s also great for my girls to see this, so they?re inspired to do something like this.?

On Saturdays, Tighe joins her Dana-Farber teammates for long group runs. Most of the runs are on the Boston Marathon course with hilly routes to prepare them for Heartbreak Hill and for the 26.2-mile race, she said.

But it?s not just the team's camaraderie that helps her through the marathon training.

?I couldn't do this without my husband Kevin?s support,? Tighe said. ?He takes our daughters to their basketball games every Saturday so I can run, and then he takes care of them when I am trying to recover.

?And he's a great masseuse, post-run,? she added.

For more information about Tighe?s fundraising, visit her page.

The Daily Voice is profiling local runners who are running the Boston Marathon for charity. Email jpaluzzi@dailyvoice.com?to have your story told.

Source: http://northborough.dailyvoice.com/sports/boston-marathon-runner-climbs-hills-fight-cure-cancer

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Satellite television on pc or satellite television is television delivered through orbiting communications satellites located 37,000 km above the earth's surface.

cardsharing - The initial satellite tv signal was relayed from Europe for your Telstar satellite over The united states in 1962. The first domestic United states of america satellite to carry television was Canada's Anik 1, that has been launched in 1973.

Satellite TV, like other communications relayed by satellite, starts off with a transmitting satellite antenna in an uplink facility. Uplink satellite dishes are targeted at the satellite what needs signals will be transmitted to, and so are large, as much as 9 to 12 meters (30 to 40 feet) in diameter. The greater the dish, the more often accurate positioning and improved signal reception about the satellite. The television signals is transmitted to devices located on-board the satellite called transponders, which retransmit the satellite signal back towards the Earth using a different frequency.

The satellite signal, quite weak after traveling through space, is collected having a parabolic receiving dish, which reflects the weak signal for the dish's centerpiece and it is received, down-converted for some lower frequency band and amplified by using a device known as a low-noise block down converter, or LNB.

A brand new type of satellite antenna, that won't use a directed parabolic dish and could be utilized on a mobile platform for instance a vehicle, was recently announced by the University of Waterloo. On popularly known as car satellite system.

The satellite television signal, now amplified, travels with a satellite television on pc receiver box through coaxial cable (RG-6 or RG-10; can't be standard RG-59) and is also converted by using a local oscillator to the L-band variety of frequencies (approximately). Special on-board electronics within the receiver box help tune the signal then convert it having a frequency a standard television may use.

While you known, tv business in United states mostly are dominated by two companies, Dish Network and DirecTV. In order to get yourself a satellite television on pc in your own home, your options mostly are restricted to the disposable tv packages that made available from every one Dish Network or DirecTV.

This is a quick take on Usa tv industry: Hughes's DirecTV, the original high-powered DBS system, went online in 1994 called the first Us DBS service. In 1996, Echostar's Dish Network went online in the usa and contains gone to similar success.

Source: http://www.proman-help.isys-informatik.ch/index.php/Benutzer%3AKinderLandon265

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Former GOP presidential candidate Huntsman backs gay marriage

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman speaks at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina January 16, 2012. REUTERS/Chr

(Reuters) - Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman voiced support for gay marriage on Thursday, reversing his position and urging the Republican Party to be more supportive of gays and lesbians who want to marry.

Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China and governor of Utah widely viewed as a moderate, made the announcement in an op-ed piece published online in The American Conservative magazine.

"I've been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life," he wrote. "There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love."

His comments appeared in an article titled "Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause."

"Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry," Huntsman wrote.

Nine of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Maryland was the most recent, with gay marriage becoming legal there on January 1.

Huntsman backed civil unions for gays and lesbians when he was governor of Utah. While he ran for the Republican presidential nomination, Huntsman told CNN, "I don't think you can redefine marriage from the traditional sense."

Huntsman abandoned his bid for the Republican nomination in January 2012 after his campaign failed to gain traction and he finished third in the New Hampshire primary.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Andrew Hay)

Source: http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2013/feb/21/former-gop-presidential-candidate-huntsman-backs-gay-marriage/

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TechCrunch Mobile Barcelona Meetup 2013 ? Here Are Our Shortlisted Startups

Barcelona is coming alive with preparations for Mobile World Congress and we are pumped about the super-international TechCrunch Mobile Barcelona meetup in the same week. With thanks to our local supporters in the shape of Barcelona.io and Wayra, we'll be bringing you a healthy round of startups, VCs and TechCrunch writers to while away your evening. The hashtag for the event will be #TCMB. Here's our line-up.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FFB7NrGckIE/

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What Are the Best Apps to Help Me Prepare My Taxes?

Dear Lifehacker,
I'm getting ready to do my taxes soon and would like to know if there are any good mobile apps or websites that will make this less painful and stressful (besides the obvious tax prep tools, of course). Help me get all the stuff I need organized!

Signed,
Taxed by Taxes

Dear Taxed,
Ah, tax season. Just the thought of it gives some of us headaches. The good news is there are lots of free and inexpensive apps and tools that can greatly simplify this awful process, from getting organized to filing your return. Here's what we recommend.

Get Your Tax Documents in Order

If you have an uncomplicated return (one W2, for example, and take the standard deduction), congratulations: You don't have to worry much about organizing your tax records. For everyone else, though, managing the piles of receipts and other documents is a big part of the pain. Several apps can help with that.

Evernote: The Swiss Army knife of note taking and capture tools, Evernote excels at keeping your documents categorized into notebooks. You can set up a tax notebook and then either sub-notebooks or tags for different categories like income statements, interest earned, charitable contributions, and the like. Combine Evernote with compact scanner Doxie or ScanSnap, and you can quickly file your receipts in Evernote. Another strategy is to use webapp automation service IFTTT to automatically send any emails you tag in Gmail with a tax label to your Evernote tax notebook. Handy!

Shoeboxed: If scanning and managing all those papers isn't your thing, take a look at receipt scanning solution Shoeboxed. As we've previously mentioned, you can mail, email, or upload your receipts to Shoeboxed and they'll OCR and categorize the documents for you. You can export those receipts to popular tax programs, as well as Evernote, and mobile apps are available. A free account lets you store 5 documents per month, while premium plans starting at $9.95 give you more capacity.

Slice: Slice is a brilliant receipt and package tracking webapp and mobile app. It scans your Gmail for receipts and gives you an overview of your entire purchase history. Last year, I used the convenient listing to find tax-deductible receipts I had forgotten about.

Expensify: If you can take deductible expenses like car mileage and meals and entertainment expenses when you travel for business, Expensify has your back. The mobile apps and web receipts extension capture all those stray receipts and attachments and can turn them into IRS-approved eReceipts. It's a great app for independent contractors.

Your personal finance program and financial accounts: Of course, don't forget to consult your personal finance tool, such as popular Mint or Quicken to see spending by category and find all those deductible expenses. Both can port your information to TurboTax.

Also, your year-end statements from your credit card or bank can also come in handy if you're hunting down your tax-related expenses. (American Express has an awesome searchable and sortable view of statements by category.)

Get Free Tax Information

TaxCaster by TurboTax: Want a sneak peek at how much of a refund (or tax bill) you'll get this year? This free tax refund calculator will estimate your taxes based on your quick inputs. It's available online, for Android, and for iOS.

Bloomberg BNA Quick Tax Reference: This app for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry gives you instant access to tax rates and other handy information, such as IRA limits, mileage rates, and more. It's developed for financial professionals, but also offers useful tools like quickly calculating your total tax.

TaxACT Central: A companion app to the popular, free tax filing service, TaxACT Central can answer your tax questions and keep you organized, with a convenient checklist of what you need to file. You don't have to use TaxACT for filing to make use of the Android or iPhone app.

File Your Taxes and Monitor Your Refund

We generally recommend going to a tax professional unless you have a very simple return. If yours isn't complicated, though, mobile and desktop apps can streamline filing your return and tracking your refund.

TurboTax SnapTax: You can file your taxes in as little as ten minutes using this simple Android and iPhone app. Snap a photo of your W2, answer a few questions, and file right from the phone or online. (Isn't the future great?) This app is only for those who: make under $100,000 ($120,000 if married); only have W2, interest, or unemployment income; and don't own a home. Free to try, but $24.99 to file both federal and state.

H&R Block also offers mobile tax apps. The 1040EZ for Smartphone prepares your simple federal and state returns for free on Android and iPhone. There's also a iPad app not limited to 1040EZ returns, with free federal filing for simple returns and an additional fee for state filing.

Of course, both of these tax services (and many others) have desktop and/or webapps. Not all tax preparation software will give you the same results, though. ConsumerSearch has rounded up reviews of the top four tax prep applications, and Get Rich Slowly has an excellent (yet older) price comparison of these solutions and services.

IRS2Go: From Uncle Sam himself, IRS2Go doesn't let you file taxes from the Android or iPhone apps, but you can check the status of your refund, get tax law updates, request a copy of your tax records in the mail, and watch IRS YouTube videos. (Perhaps not the most exciting download, but we are talking about the IRS and taxes here.)

Grab these apps and put them in a new tax organization folder and you'll be set for this tax season and beyond.

Love,
Lifehacker

Have a question or suggestion for Ask Lifehacker? Send it to tips+asklh@lifehacker.com.

Photo remixed from an original by Nejron Photo (Shutterstock)

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/eEsew6KLUy8/what-are-the-best-apps-to-help-me-prepare-my-taxes

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