Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/175990849?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Europe crisis "serious risk" to outlook: Treasury (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Europe's debt crisis has deepened and become more entrenched, posing a serious risk to the economic outlook, a senior Treasury official told lawmakers on Friday.
Mark Sobel, Treasury deputy assistant secretary for international affairs, said in prepared testimony before the House of Representatives Oversight subcommittee that the crisis has sharply weakened Europe's economic prospects for next year.
"Growth in the euro area is projected by most analysts to be negative this quarter and into early 2012, with weak growth persisting in 2012," Sobel said.
He added that Europe's problems were a "serious risk for the U.S. economic outlook and said that President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were "actively engaged" with European counterparts to help them deal with the crisis.
Sobel also repeated Obama administration's views that stronger European countries must do more to contain the crisis on their own.
"As European countries act to develop critical economic reforms and to strengthen fiscal governance, Europe must also continue mobilizing the requisite resources to put in place a strong and credible firewall commensurate with the scale of the challenge," he said. It must do so quickly, with force and determination."
While the International Monetary Fund can play a role in easing the crisis, "the IMF cannot substitute for a strong and credible European firewall and response," he added.
(Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)
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Gingrich Aide Resigns After Referring to Mormonism as a Cult (ContributorNetwork)
Their time together was brief, to be sure. Craig Bergman, the man that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had picked to be his political director in Iowa, stepped down on Tuesday after reports surfaced that he had called Mormonism a "cult." According to Yahoo News' The Ticket, Bergman was speaking in front of a focus group conducted by McClatchy Newspapers and the Iowa Republican Party.
The focus group's discussion was centered around the role of religion in voters' decision-making process regarding each of the Republican presidential candidates. Reportedly, the focus group had found that the fact that fellow candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon is likely to cost him votes in Iowa.
Religion in general has started to move more to the forefront in discussions leading up to the Iowa Caucus in recent weeks, as Romney has appeared to move past his earlier resistance to speaking about his faith. According to The Ticket, Gingrich himself just signed his fourth no-adultery pledge in front of the Iowa-based group The Family Leader on Monday, which entailed his promise to stay faithful to his current wife, Callista, as well as to protect marriage as an institution only between a man and a woman and help keep federal dollars from being used for abortions.
Newt Gingrich
Despite the Des Moines Register's reports of a surge of support among religious conservatives for Bachmann, Gingrich still retains the majority of the vote here. While his messy personal life, including multiple extramarital affairs and divorces, remains a concern to some evangelicals, his plea for forgiveness during his campaign has won over some of the more reluctant voters, who have said in interviews with The Daily Beast and other media outlets that they believe that it's now time to forgive him for his past transgressions.
Mitt Romney
Up until recently, Romney rarely discussed his faith. But concern from Iowa conservatives in focus groups, such as the one Bergman attended this week, that being a Mormon will cost him votes appears to have altered his thinking. At a Republican debate Saturday night, the New York Times reported that Romney openly discussed his time as a missionary and how it affected his view of people's struggles. He appears to be taking a calculated risk in juxtaposing his own history of service and marital fidelity against Gingrich's.
Ron Paul
Paul appears to be making a strong last-minute stand in Iowa, with a survey conducted by the Public Policy Polling group from December 11 to 13 placing him in a close second to Gingrich. The problem is, he's still unlikely to win the nomination, according to the Associated Press. What he may do, however, is help get some Iowa voters to select Romney over Gingrich. Paul in particular draws younger voters, who are less likely to view religion as a hindrance. His support base, should he lose the nomination, could conceivably then swing to Romney.
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Friday, December 16, 2011
'Farmville' maker's stock lukewarm in public debut
The corporate logo for Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 in New York. Stock in the San Francisco company began trading at Nasdaq, Friday following its IPO. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
The corporate logo for Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 in New York. Stock in the San Francisco company began trading at Nasdaq, Friday following its IPO. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
"Farmville" by Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in New York. Stock in the San Francisco company began trading at Nasdaq, Friday following its IPO. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
The corporate logo for Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in New York. Stock in the San Francisco company began trading at Nasdaq, Friday following its IPO. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
The corporate logo for Zynga is shown on an electronic billboard at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in New York. Stock in the San Francisco company began trading at Nasdaq, Friday following its IPO. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2011 file photo, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus speaks at a Zynga event, in San Francisco. Founded in 2007 and named after CEO Mark Pincus? dog, Zynga Inc. follows online deals site Groupon Inc. and professional network LinkedIn Corp. in going public. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Zynga's stock got a lukewarm reception in its public debut Friday.
The online game developer's stock fell 36 cents, or nearly 4 percent, to $9.64 in midday trading, though earlier it traded slightly higher. It was by no means the eye-popping jump that's been the norm for freshly public Internet darlings such as Groupon Inc. and LinkedIn Corp.
But CEO Mark Pincus said Zynga's focus is on "delivering great products" that expand audience for social games over the next few years ? and not on the next trading day.
"We didn't have any expectations coming into this whole process," he said in an interview. "We decided to go public a long time ago."
Zynga Inc., which specializes in Facebook games, raised $1 billion in its initial public offering of stock. That makes it the largest Internet-related IPO since Google Inc. went public in 2004 and raised $1.4 billion. Pincus rang the Nasdaq's opening bell in San Francisco, a first in the city for a freshly public company.
The company's roughly 1,700 San Francisco employees woke up at the crack of down to celebrate with cinnamon buns and hot cocoa. Zynga also delivered video of the opening ceremony over the Internet to its offices around the world.
Zynga's $10-per-share IPO price was at the top of its expected range, a sign that investors were eager to dig into the latest in a series of high-profile technology IPOs this year. It values the company at about $7 billion.
Online deals site Groupon, which began trading in early November, has a market capitalization twice that of Zynga's, $14 billion. But Zynga is selling a much bigger chunk of its available shares, 14.3 percent compared with Groupon's 5.5 percent. It's an issue of supply and demand ? selling more shares means investors don't have to scramble to get their hands on them.
Zynga rounds out a year of high-profile Internet IPOs. The biggest of them all, though ? Facebook ? is not expected until after April.
Zynga charges small amounts of money ? a few cents, sometimes a couple of dollars ? for virtual items in online games. The games are free to play. Players can acquire items that range from crops in "Farmville" to buildings in "CityVille," its most popular Facebook game.
With its huge player base and a few loyal spenders, Zynga earned a net income of $90.6 million in 2010, an unusual pre-IPO money-maker in the sector.
Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz, however, initiated coverage Friday with a "Neutral" rating on the stock. Although Zynga is the leader in Facebook gaming, he's concerned that it won't be able to grow fast enough to justify its stock price. Growth in Facebook gaming has slowed, and Zynga's market share has declined from 50 percent to 38 percent of daily active users, he wrote.
He's also concerned that Zynga's famously aggressive and hard-charging culture may not be the best field to grow good games in. Others have raised concerns that the focus on deadlines and profits might be squeezing out creativity and talent.
In November, Groupon raised $700 million in its IPO. The granddaddy of all Internet IPOs might happen next year, as Facebook Inc. is expected to raise as much as $10 billion.
Zynga is trading under the ticker "ZNGA" on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
___
AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this report.
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Japan Unleashing Packs of Wild Monkeys to Test Fukushima Radiation [Fukushima]
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EU accepts IBM concessions in antitrust probe
BRUSSELS (AP) ? The European Union's competition watchdog says it has accepted concessions made by IBM to make it easier for rivals to perform maintenance on its mainframe computers and is closing its investigation of the company.
The European Commission last year opened a probe into whether International Business Machines Corp. was illegal restricting other companies from providing profitable maintenance services on its mainframe computers.
In September, Armonk, New York-based IBM offered to make it easier for rivals to get spare parts and technical information.
On Wednesday, the commission accepted those concessions after questioning other companies about their relevance.
IBM said in a statement that it welcomes the resolution of the case.
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Thursday, December 15, 2011
Supernova caught in the act
ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) ? The earliest detection ever of a Type Ia supernova has led to unparalleled observations of the initial stages of the stellar explosion and characterization of the nature of the stars that formed it.
On Aug. 24, 2011, astronomers discovered a nearby Type Ia supernova--the earliest detection ever--with help from a machine-based, real-time, classification system. The early detection and close proximity of the stars set the stage for unprecedented observation of the initial stages of a Type Ia supernova. The December 15 issue of the journal Nature published two articles describing the exploding star and details about the companion star.
"The National Science Foundation- (NSF) sponsored work we did in Berkeley on real-time classification of astronomical time-series helped with this large needle-in-a-haystack problem: we have 1.5 million candidates a night, of which only a few are interesting new transients," said Josh Bloom, a co-author on both articles referring to objects that change in the night sky. "Our machine learning-based codes raised the supernova candidate event to the top of list of possible new transients."
Supernovae are extraordinarily bright stellar explosions that signal the death of a star and there are several different types. Type Ia supernovae have similarities that allow astronomers to use them as standards when comparing the distances of objects in the sky, however little is known about the stars that produce them or how they behave when they explode. Models of Type Ia supernovae assume they are formed from two-star systems in which a very dense, very small star called a white dwarf orbits a companion.
This supernova, named 2011fe, occurred in the Pinwheel galaxy, which is located in the "Big Dipper" within the Ursa Major constellation. Early detection gave astronomers the extraordinary opportunity to observe the evolution of the brightness and spectra of the energy emitted from the explosion over time. Based on these data, researchers were able to approximate how big the star was and when it exploded, in addition to details about the companion star in the system.
NSF's Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program, with the goal of building computational tools with concrete scientific returns in mind, supported the computational framework that enabled this discovery.
The framework could form the foundation for applications in other fields with similar demands and constraints, such as high-frequency financial data, robotics, medical signal monitoring, geophysics, weather and particle physics.
The astronomy, computer science and mathematical sciences divisions of NSF jointly supported the CDI grant. "The unprecedented rapid detection and early observation of a supernova is a wonderful example of a main theme of the interdisciplinary CDI program--'From Data to Knowledge: enhancing human cognition and generating new knowledge from a wealth of digital data,' said Tom Russell of NSF's Office of Integrative Activities. "In 2012, NSF is continuing its emphasis on this theme through the Data-Enabled Science component of the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering portfolio of activities."
"This event might have been missed or not detected right away--maybe even a week later, if we only relied on human eyes to do the search," continued Bloom. "No one has done this type of search on this scale before, and as new astronomical surveys come online in the next few years, this framework for extracting novel science from large amounts of data will become increasingly important."
Methods developed within the 'Data to Knowledge' theme of the CDI program apply scientific knowledge to enable automated processing of massive data streams, while the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a wide-field survey that scans the skies for transients. This made Bloom's CDI project and the PTF a natural collaboration.
"We are moving into the era of peta-scale astronomical surveys, of which the NSF-supported Palomar Transient Factory is an early example," said Nigel Sharp, program director for NSF's division of Astronomical Sciences. "This supernova result is an excellent illustration of the power of machine learning to assist not only with data collection and reduction, but with the tasks of discovery and inference as well."
Shri Kulkarni, an astronomer at University of California, Berkeley and leader of the PTF, also commented on the effectiveness of this collaboration and the power of teamwork, "The Palomar Transient Factory has been an amazing machine. The rapid discovery of the supernova in the Pinwheel galaxy is a testament to the great teamwork (spread over a half a dozen institutions) that has made rapid classification of supernova possible within the same night."
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Journal References:
- Peter E. Nugent, Mark Sullivan, S. Bradley Cenko, Rollin C. Thomas, Daniel Kasen, D. Andrew Howell, David Bersier, Joshua S. Bloom, S. R. Kulkarni, Michael T. Kandrashoff, Alexei V. Filippenko, Jeffrey M. Silverman, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Andrew W. Howard, Howard T. Isaacson, Kate Maguire, Nao Suzuki, James E. Tarlton, Yen-Chen Pan, Lars Bildsten, Benjamin J. Fulton, Jerod T. Parrent, David Sand, Philipp Podsiadlowski, Federica B. Bianco, Benjamin Dilday, Melissa L. Graham, Joe Lyman, Phil James, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Nicholas M. Law, Robert M. Quimby, Isobel M. Hook, Emma S. Walker, Paolo Mazzali, Elena Pian, Eran O. Ofek, Avishay Gal-Yam, Dovi Poznanski. Supernova SN 2011fe from an exploding carbon?oxygen white dwarf star. Nature, 2011; 480 (7377): 344 DOI: 10.1038/nature10644
- Weidong Li, Joshua S. Bloom, Philipp Podsiadlowski, Adam A. Miller, S. Bradley Cenko, Saurabh W. Jha, Mark Sullivan, D. Andrew Howell, Peter E. Nugent, Nathaniel R. Butler, Eran O. Ofek, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Joseph W. Richards, Alan Stockton, Hsin-Yi Shih, Lars Bildsten, Michael M. Shara, Joanne Bibby, Alexei V. Filippenko, Mohan Ganeshalingam, Jeffrey M. Silverman, S. R. Kulkarni, Nicholas M. Law, Dovi Poznanski, Robert M. Quimby, Curtis McCully, Brandon Patel, Kate Maguire, Ken J. Shen. Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe. Nature, 2011; 480 (7377): 348 DOI: 10.1038/nature10646
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214135736.htm
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