The creators and executive producers of Bravo's "Pregnant in Heels" and Oxygen's "I'm Having Their Baby" are looking for family owned and operated businesses that are passing the buck to the next generation. Can't decide who in the family is the best person to be the boss? Worried the family restaurant or grocery store will never be the same? Let us help you decide the best person for the job!
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Companies including Microsoft and Nokia have stepped up pressure on EU antitrust regulators to take action against Google, accusing it of blocking competition in mobile telephony.
The complaint comes as Google attempts to resolve a two-year long investigation by the European Commission into its internet search practices and avert a possible fine that could hit $5 billion, or 10 percent of its 2012 revenue.
More than a dozen companies have voiced their grievances about Google's search practices to the Commission.
The investigation's initial focus was on its desktop search engine, but European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said last year he had received complaints about Google's Android, the world's most popular operating system for smartphones.
Almunia has said he aims to reach a settlement with Google in the latter half of the year. The complainants, however, are frustrated with the pace of his investigation.
In a complaint made public on Tuesday by their lobbying group FairSearch, Google's rivals accused the company of using Android to divert traffic to its search engine.
FairSearch's other members include world No. 3 software maker Oracle, online travel sites Expedia and TripAdvisor, French shopping comparison site Twenga, British price comparison site Foundem and U.S.-based adMarketplace.
"Google is using its Android mobile operating system as a 'Trojan Horse' to deceive partners, monopolize the mobile marketplace, and control consumer data," FairSearch's lawyer Thomas Vinje said in a statement.
"Failure to act will only embolden Google to repeat its desktop abuses of dominance as consumers increasingly turn to a mobile platform dominated by Google's Android operating system." he said.
The Commission declined to comment.
Google spokesman Al Verney said the company continued to work cooperatively with the regulator.
Google won a major victory in the United States in January when the Federal Trade Commission ended an investigation without any significant action against the company.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) ? A circus veterinarian says the Asian elephant wounded in a drive-by shooting in Mississippi should be fully recovered within a few weeks.
Meanwhile, a reward for information leading to an arrest has climbed to $21,000.
Dr. Dennis Schmitt, a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus veterinarian, says the 39-year-old Asian elephant named Carol will be taken home to Springfield, Mo., to recuperate.
Schmitt says the bullet hit Carol in the neck just above the shoulder, but it missed any major blood vessels or nerves.
Schmitt says the elephant has been alert and active since the injury.
Police Chief Tony Carleton says a vehicle drove past Tupelo BancorpSouth Arena about 2 a.m. and fired into the area. Police are investigating.
Microsoft announced today via its blog that it will be selling its Mediaroom properties to Ericsson, in a deal that will see Ericsson become the dominant IPTV player in the industry with over 25 percent market share. Mediaroom operates as a pretty much separate company from Microsoft, with its own HQ in Mountain View and around 400 employees, and powers TV offerings like AT&T U-verse, as well as services from Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telus. The deal clears the deck for Microsoft fo go all-in on Xbox as the focal point of its own TV efforts.
Following brain surgery, your main worry should not be whether you?ll get fired at work for refusing to wear a wig that scrapes your scar. But former Hooters waitress Sandra Lupo contends in a lawsuit that?s what happened when she declined to don a wig and her hours were reduced so much, she was forced to quit.
She filed a disability discrimination lawsuit in Missouri against Hooters of St. Peters, LLC and Hooters of America LLC and is seeking $25,000 for mental and emotional distress, plus punitive damages, attorney fees and other relief.
"Hooters of America believes the lawsuit is without foundation, denies the accusations and has filed a motion that the lawsuit be dismissed," the company said in a statement to NBC News. Hooters, in an April 5 response to the court, denies most of her statements and says ?its actions were taken for legitimate, nondiscriminatory business reasons.?
Hooters is a privately held chain of restaurants that bank on attractive waitresses wearing short shorts and cleavage-hugging shirts.
Lupo, who had been working at the Hooters of St. Peters, Mo., since 2005, was in her last six weeks of nursing school and was at her computer in June 2012 when she felt tingling and numbness on her left side. ?I was bleeding out in my brain,? she told NBCNews.com.
She spent a week in the hospital following her July 2 surgery and was visited by her Hooters manager, according to her suit filed on the Circuit Court of St. Charles County.
The lawsuit claims that her store manager told her ?she could return to work as soon as she was capable, and that, she could wear a ?chemo cap? or any other items of jewelry to distract from her lack of hair and the visibility of her cranial scar.?
Her hair had been cut to ?-inch for the surgery.
On July 16, Lupo?s doctors gave her the all-clear to return to work. Soon after, she met with her manager and the Hooters' regional manager, who said she would be required to wear a wig at work, according to Lupo?s lawsuit.
Hooters? April 5 filing does not address whether any of its employees told Lupo to wear a wig. It says that her manager ?informed her she would need a head covering.?
At the time of the meeting, Lupo protested that she was unable to afford a wig, which can cost from several hundred to several thousands of dollars, according to her claim.
When she did return to work July 21, wigless, she was told a wig was required. She then borrowed a wig but it ?caused extreme stress to her body because of the surgery and the healing wound,? according to the suit.
Hooters then reduced her hours ?to the point that Plaintiff could not earn an income, thereby forcing Plaintiff to quit,? according to the suit. ?It is and has been the routine custom, policy and practice of Defendants to reduce their employees? hours which forces them to voluntarily resign thereby making them ineligible for unemployment compensation.?
The Hooters filing specifically denies that allegation.
After Lupo said she could not wear the wig, Hooters stopped scheduling her for as many hours, she said.
?I actually had to beg for one shift a week,? Lupo said. Pre-surgery, she was working several days a week while finishing nursing school. She had also trained staff and worked promotions for the restaurant, but no alternate duties were offered to her.
?They refused to accommodate it,? she said.
Today she is recovered, graduated and working as a registered nurse.
?Justice,? she said, is the main goal of the lawsuit.
Following Lady Thatcher?s death, people who want to look impressively ?political? are acting like they remember Thatcher as something other than a vague abstract concept of evil.
Guardian website regular Tom Booker said: ?Thatcher is dead! This is the best day of my life.
?I was really against everything she stood for, whatever that was.
?Especially her ?prole tax?. She actually invented the word prole, the old bitch.?
28-year-old Facebook self-promoter Nikki Hollis wrote: ?Mrs T dead at last. Horrible woman, although I feel sorry for Mr T he was ace in The A Team.?
19-year-old student Stephen Malley said: ?The worst thing about Mrs Thatcher was her lack of humanity, empathy or emotion.
?That?s why it?s great that she?s succumbed to dementia after what would have been a long, frustrating and humiliating illness of the type commonly affecting elderly people. The fucking old cow.?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumers are multitasking and using other electronic devices such as phones and tablets while they watch television, according to a survey released on Monday.
The online poll of 3,501 consumers in France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States showed that an overwhelming majority, 90 percent, said they watched some video content over the Internet, with the tablet seeing the biggest increase.
"Consumers can't just watch TV anymore," said Francesco Venturini, of the management consulting and technology services firm Accenture's Media & Entertainment industry group.
"The rise in multitasking while watching TV suggests that scheduled programming, also known as Linear TV, may be losing its appeal for sophisticated users, presenting both challenges and opportunities for broadcasters and content providers," Venturini added.
According to the third annual Video Over Internet survey, 77 percent of consumers said they regularly use their computer while watching television, an increase of 16 percentage points from just a year ago.
But people also said their simultaneous computer usage is mostly unrelated to the programs they are watching.
An exception was the use of tablets, which correlated more closely with what consumers were watching compared to laptops or smartphones.
Only 17 percent of people using tablets during TV time said their activity was unrelated to the TV content they were viewing.
Tablet use during television viewing also saw the biggest increase in the past year, soaring from 11 percent to 44 percent, despite fewer people owning them compared to computers or smartphones.
The survey also found that consumers are increasingly using local online video service providers, an increase from 37 percent to 40 percent, a similar amount to the decrease in use by global providers like Netflix and YouTube.
And a majority of respondents identified traditional TV broadcasters as the providers they trusted most to offer video over the Internet on their TV screen.
Accenture consulting firm conducted the survey in February and March, with Brazil's sample disproportionately represented by urban populations. No margin of error was provided.
(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Doina Chiacu)
On Friday, veteran journalist Bill Moyers did a segment on Silicon Valley that gives a very different perspective than we get from most mainstream media coverage of the world-renowned tech industry hub, and it's been fueling some good conversations this weekend. Called "Homeless in High Tech's Shadow," it's a very interesting look at the growing homeless problem in the South Bay of San Francisco that's happening in stark contrast to the growing wealth in the same area. Instead of another breathless look at the Google cafeteria that offers free gourmet food for all employees, we meet a former worker in that same cafeteria who was laid off as the company tightened its hiring policies and is now living in a tent. Instead of gleaming footage of the high-tech machinery that produces silicon wafers, we meet a former National Semiconductor employee who is now homeless at the age of 54 with "nothing" to her name.
The total number of registered domain names passed 250 million in the last quarter of 2012, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief. More than 6 million domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total to 252 million worldwide. The basic .com domains, of course, make up the majority of registered domain names. By the end of December users had registered 106.2 million .com domains, as well as 14.9 million .net addresses. The .com and .net top-level domains (TLDs) also accounted for the majority of newly registered domain names. In total, 8 million .com and .net TLDs were registered during the fourth quarter of 2012, up slightly from the 7.9 million that were registered in the year-ago quarter. About 21 percent of .com and .net websites, by the way, are just one-page sites and 15 percent are registered but don’t point to a working site at all. Outside of those two TLDs, country code top-level domains grew another 5 percent quarter over quarter and 21.6 percent year-over-year to a total of 110.2 million domain names, with China driving quite a bit of this growth. Indeed, China is now the seventh-largest TLD, according to Verisign’s data. Top TLDs: .COM, .DE, .NET and .TK Here is the full running order of?the largest TLDs: The largest TLDs in order by zone size were .com, .de (Germany), .net, .tk (Tokelau), .uk (United Kingdom), .org, .cn (China), .info, .nl (Netherlands) and .ru (Russian Federation). The one domain that probably stands out here is .tk, the top-level domain of Tokelau. These .tk domain names, which are available for free through Freedom Registry,?have a bit of a reputation for hosting phishing sites, but chances are that the lure of a free domain name is driving most of these registrations.
President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama listens as National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama leaves the stage in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, after he spoke about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama announces the BRIAN, Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies proposal, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, East Room of the White House in Washington. The president is asking Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a new project to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed an effort to map the brain's activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat such conditions as Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injuries.
He asked Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a project that will explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.
That's a relatively small investment for the federal government ? less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun ? but it's too early to determine how Congress will react.
Obama said the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs, and told scientists gathered in the White House's East Room that the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.
"As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away," Obama said. "We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."
Scientists unconnected to the project praised the idea.
BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The idea, which Obama first proposed in his State of the Union address, would require the development of new technology that can record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain "at the speed of thought," the White House said.
Obama wants the initial $100 million investment to support research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. He also wants private companies, universities and philanthropists to partner with the federal agencies in support of the research. And he wants a study of the ethical, legal and societal implications of the research.
The goals of the work are unclear at this point. A working group at NIH, co-chaired by Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, would work on defining the goals and develop a multi-year plan to achieve them that included cost estimates.
The $100 million request is "a pretty good start for getting this project off the ground," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health told reporters in a conference call. While the ultimate goal applies to the human brain, some work will be done in simpler systems of the brains of animals like worms, flies and mice, he said.
Collins said new understandings about how the brain works may also provide leads for developing better computers.
Brain scientists unconnected with the project were enthusiastic.
"This is spectacular," said David Fitzpatrick, scientific director and CEO of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, Fla., which focuses on studying neural circuits and structures.
While current brain-scanning technologies can reveal the average activity of large populations of brain cells, the new project is aimed at tracking activity down to the individual cell and the tiny details of cell connections, he said. It's "an entirely different scale," he said, and one that can pay off someday in treatments for a long list of neurological and psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, Parkinson's, depression, epilepsy and autism.
"Ultimately, you can't fix it if you don't know how it works," he said. "We need this fundamental understanding of neuronal circuits, their structure, their function and their development in order to make progress on these disorders."
"This investment in fundamental brain science is going to pay off immensely in the future," Fitzpatrick said.
Richard Frackowiak, a co-director of Europe's Human Brain Project, which is funded by the European Commission, said he was delighted by the announcement.
"From our point of view as scientists we can only applaud and say we will collaborate as much as possible," he said. "The opportunities for a massive worldwide collaborative effort to solve the problem of neurodegeneration and psychiatric disease will ... really become absolutely feasible," he said. "We need that."
"Girls" just lost a guy: Christopher Abbott, who plays Marnie's on-again boyfriend Charlie, will not return for season three, HBO confirmed to TODAY.com. ?
HBO
Christopher Abbott (Charlie) and Allison Williams (Marnie) in the season two finale of "Girls.
One show insider told E! Online that "creative differences" between Abbott and "Girls" creator and star Lena Dunham are to blame for the actor's abrupt exit.
Charlie stands out as one of the Generation Whine drama's few unhateable characters. After being abused and dumped by the privileged princess Marnie (Allison Williams), he struck it rich with a wildly successful iPhone app. ?
The couple's reconciliation was one of the highlights of the season two finale (unless of course you were furious that Charlie took that snob back), so Abbott's exit guarantees that Marnie won't enjoy that fairy-tale ending for long.
Abbott recently starred in the critically acclaimed 2011 film "Martha Marcy May Marlene," and had a memorable guest spot on season two of "Enlightened," also on HBO.
"Chris Abbott is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd (Apatow), and the entire 'Girls' cast and crew, but right now he's working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show," a rep for the actor said in a statement to TODAY.com.
Season three of "Girls" is currently in production in New York City.
Will Charlie's departure affect your decision to watch season three? Tell us on our Facebook page!
Over the last couple of years, Social Media has literally exploding. The Grind team here as literally built our following and readership on organic social media.
These days, it isn?t just enough for small businesses to just use social media for their immediate marketing needs. They need to mend it in with their overall business strategies. All the way from customer service to collecting and prioritizing product ideas in order to get the most value.
The infographic below from Get Satisifaction takes a closer look at why small businesses should use social media for all of their business needs, with goals, strategies, case studies and tips.
Click To Enlarge.
An advocate for a free and open web and a serial entrepreneur, Preston has an in depth working history online with ecommerce, content creation and affiliate marketing. Most recently, Preston has had both the opportunity and pleasure to serve the Internet Marketing Grind Forums as a moderator.
Contact: Richard Mellor r.d.mellor@leeds.ac.uk 44-011-334-34031 University of Leeds
Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.
This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.
"The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology," said Dr Terry Kee, from the University's School of Chemistry, who led the research.
All life on Earth is powered by a process called chemiosmosis, where the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the rechargeable chemical 'battery' for life, is both broken down and re-formed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life, or metabolism. The complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on the Earth during the period when life first developed. This led scientists to look for a more basic chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy.
Phosphorus is the key element in ATP, and other fundamental building blocks of life like DNA, but the form it commonly takes on Earth, phosphorus (V), is largely insoluble in water and has a low chemical reactivity. The early Earth, however, was regularly bombarded by meteorites and interstellar dust rich in exotic minerals, including the far more reactive form of phosphorus, the iron-nickel-phosphorus mineral schreibersite.
The scientists simulated the impact of such a meteorite with the hot, volcanically-active, early Earth by placing samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite which fell in Siberia in 1947, in acid taken from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left to react with the acidic fluid in test tubes incubated by the surrounding hot spring for four days, followed by a further 30 days at room temperature.
In their analysis of the resulting solution the scientists found the compound pyrophosphite, a molecular 'cousin' of pyrophosphate the part of ATP responsible for energy transfer. The scientists believe this compound could have acted as an earlier form of ATP in what they have dubbed 'chemical life'.
"Chemical life would have been the intermediary step between inorganic rock and the very first living biological cell. You could think of chemical life as a machine a robot, for example, is capable of moving and reacting to surroundings, but it is not alive. With the aid of these primitive batteries, chemicals became organised in such a way as to be capable of more complex behaviour and would have eventually developed into the living biological structures we see today," said Dr Terry Kee.
The team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-Caltech) working on the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August last year, has recently reported the presence of phosphorus on the Red Planet.
"If Curiosity has found phosphorus in one of the forms we produced in Iceland, this may indicate that conditions on Mars were at one point suitable for the development of life in much the same way we now believe it developed on Earth," added Dr Kee.
The team at Leeds are now working with colleagues at JPL-Caltech to understand how these early batteries and the 'chemical life' they became part of might have developed into biological life. As part of this work they will be using facilities in the University of Leeds' Faculty of Engineering, currently used to test new fuel cells, to build a 'geological fuel cell' using minerals and gases common on the early Earth. Researchers will apply different chemicals to its surface and monitor the reactions take place and the chemical products which develop.
The team also hope to travel to Disko Island in Greenland which is home to the Earth's only naturally-occurring source of schreibersite, the mineral found in the Sikhote-Alin meteorite. Here, they hope to repeat their experiments and show that the same chemicals develop in an entirely Earth-originated setting.
###
The paper Hydrothermal modification of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite under low pH geothermal environments. A plausibly prebiotic route to activated phosphorus on the early Earth was published online by the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta on 15th March 2013.
The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, Science and Technology Facilities Council and the UK Space Agency.
For more information
Dr Terry Kee is available for interview.
Contact Richard Mellor, Communications, University of Leeds
T: +44 (0)113 3434031
E: r.d.mellor@leeds.ac.uk
Notes to Editors
1. The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise showed the University of Leeds to be the UK's eighth biggest research powerhouse. The University is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. The University's vision is to secure a place among the world's top 50 by 2015. http://www.leeds.ac.uk
2. David E. Bryant, David Greenfield, Richard D. Walshaw, Benjamin R.G. Johnson, Barry Herschy, Caroline Smith, Matthew A. Pasek, Richard Telford, Ian Scowen, Tasnim Munshi, Howell G.M. Edwards, Claire R. Cousins, Ian A. Crawford, Terence P. Kee, Hydrothermal modification of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite under low pH geothermal environments. A plausibly prebiotic route to activated phosphorus on the early Earth, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 109, 15 May 2013, Pages 90-112, ISSN 0016-7037, 10.1016/j.gca.2012.12.043. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703713000161)
3. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk
4. The Science and Technology Facilities Council is keeping the UK at the forefront of international science and tackling some of the most significant challenges facing society such as meeting our future energy needs, monitoring and understanding climate change, and global security. The Council has a broad science portfolio and works with the academic and industrial communities to share its expertise in materials science, space and ground-based astronomy technologies, laser science, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar. STFC operates or hosts world class experimental facilities including:
in the UK; ISIS pulsed neutron source, the Central Laser Facility, and OFAR. STFC is also the majority shareholder in Diamond Light Source Ltd.
overseas; telescopes on La Palma and Hawaii
It enables UK researchers to access leading international science facilities by funding membership of international bodies including European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). STFC is one of seven publicly-funded research councils. It is an independent, non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Follow us on Twitter @STFC_Matters http://www.stfc.ac.uk
5. The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the Will of the first Viscount Leverhulme. It is one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing funds of some 60 million every year. For further information about the schemes that the Leverhulme Trust fund visit their website at http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk / http://www.twitter.com/LeverhulmeTrust
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Contact: Richard Mellor r.d.mellor@leeds.ac.uk 44-011-334-34031 University of Leeds
Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.
This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.
"The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology," said Dr Terry Kee, from the University's School of Chemistry, who led the research.
All life on Earth is powered by a process called chemiosmosis, where the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the rechargeable chemical 'battery' for life, is both broken down and re-formed during respiration to release energy used to drive the reactions of life, or metabolism. The complex enzymes required for both the creation and break down of ATP are unlikely to have existed on the Earth during the period when life first developed. This led scientists to look for a more basic chemical with similar properties to ATP, but that does not require enzymes to transfer energy.
Phosphorus is the key element in ATP, and other fundamental building blocks of life like DNA, but the form it commonly takes on Earth, phosphorus (V), is largely insoluble in water and has a low chemical reactivity. The early Earth, however, was regularly bombarded by meteorites and interstellar dust rich in exotic minerals, including the far more reactive form of phosphorus, the iron-nickel-phosphorus mineral schreibersite.
The scientists simulated the impact of such a meteorite with the hot, volcanically-active, early Earth by placing samples of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, an iron meteorite which fell in Siberia in 1947, in acid taken from the Hveradalur geothermal area in Iceland. The rock was left to react with the acidic fluid in test tubes incubated by the surrounding hot spring for four days, followed by a further 30 days at room temperature.
In their analysis of the resulting solution the scientists found the compound pyrophosphite, a molecular 'cousin' of pyrophosphate the part of ATP responsible for energy transfer. The scientists believe this compound could have acted as an earlier form of ATP in what they have dubbed 'chemical life'.
"Chemical life would have been the intermediary step between inorganic rock and the very first living biological cell. You could think of chemical life as a machine a robot, for example, is capable of moving and reacting to surroundings, but it is not alive. With the aid of these primitive batteries, chemicals became organised in such a way as to be capable of more complex behaviour and would have eventually developed into the living biological structures we see today," said Dr Terry Kee.
The team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-Caltech) working on the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August last year, has recently reported the presence of phosphorus on the Red Planet.
"If Curiosity has found phosphorus in one of the forms we produced in Iceland, this may indicate that conditions on Mars were at one point suitable for the development of life in much the same way we now believe it developed on Earth," added Dr Kee.
The team at Leeds are now working with colleagues at JPL-Caltech to understand how these early batteries and the 'chemical life' they became part of might have developed into biological life. As part of this work they will be using facilities in the University of Leeds' Faculty of Engineering, currently used to test new fuel cells, to build a 'geological fuel cell' using minerals and gases common on the early Earth. Researchers will apply different chemicals to its surface and monitor the reactions take place and the chemical products which develop.
The team also hope to travel to Disko Island in Greenland which is home to the Earth's only naturally-occurring source of schreibersite, the mineral found in the Sikhote-Alin meteorite. Here, they hope to repeat their experiments and show that the same chemicals develop in an entirely Earth-originated setting.
###
The paper Hydrothermal modification of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite under low pH geothermal environments. A plausibly prebiotic route to activated phosphorus on the early Earth was published online by the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta on 15th March 2013.
The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, Science and Technology Facilities Council and the UK Space Agency.
For more information
Dr Terry Kee is available for interview.
Contact Richard Mellor, Communications, University of Leeds
T: +44 (0)113 3434031
E: r.d.mellor@leeds.ac.uk
Notes to Editors
1. The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise showed the University of Leeds to be the UK's eighth biggest research powerhouse. The University is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. The University's vision is to secure a place among the world's top 50 by 2015. http://www.leeds.ac.uk
2. David E. Bryant, David Greenfield, Richard D. Walshaw, Benjamin R.G. Johnson, Barry Herschy, Caroline Smith, Matthew A. Pasek, Richard Telford, Ian Scowen, Tasnim Munshi, Howell G.M. Edwards, Claire R. Cousins, Ian A. Crawford, Terence P. Kee, Hydrothermal modification of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite under low pH geothermal environments. A plausibly prebiotic route to activated phosphorus on the early Earth, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 109, 15 May 2013, Pages 90-112, ISSN 0016-7037, 10.1016/j.gca.2012.12.043. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703713000161)
3. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk
4. The Science and Technology Facilities Council is keeping the UK at the forefront of international science and tackling some of the most significant challenges facing society such as meeting our future energy needs, monitoring and understanding climate change, and global security. The Council has a broad science portfolio and works with the academic and industrial communities to share its expertise in materials science, space and ground-based astronomy technologies, laser science, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar. STFC operates or hosts world class experimental facilities including:
in the UK; ISIS pulsed neutron source, the Central Laser Facility, and OFAR. STFC is also the majority shareholder in Diamond Light Source Ltd.
overseas; telescopes on La Palma and Hawaii
It enables UK researchers to access leading international science facilities by funding membership of international bodies including European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). STFC is one of seven publicly-funded research councils. It is an independent, non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Follow us on Twitter @STFC_Matters http://www.stfc.ac.uk
5. The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the Will of the first Viscount Leverhulme. It is one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing funds of some 60 million every year. For further information about the schemes that the Leverhulme Trust fund visit their website at http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk / http://www.twitter.com/LeverhulmeTrust
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Apr. 3, 2013 ? Imagine you have a choice to make. In one scenario, you'd get $8 and somebody else -- a stranger -- would get $8 too. In the other, you'd get $10; the stranger would get $12.
Economists typically assume you'd go for the $10/$12 option because of the belief that people try to maximize their own gains. Choosing the other scenario would just be irrational.
But new research conducted in collaboration with a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management shows that if a person is feeling threatened, or concerned with their status, they are more likely to choose the option that gives them less. And although this choice might seem irrational from an economic perspective, this choice satisfies an important psychological need.
People who do this, "have a reason for their behaviour, and that reason is to protect themselves from low status," described as a low position or rank in relation to others, says Prof. Geoffrey Leonardelli, who co-wrote the paper with Vanessa Bohns from the University of Waterloo and Jun Gu from Australia's Monash University.
Through a series of experiments, the researchers found that people who showed a systematic preference for "relative outcomes" (economic payoffs which gave them the same as or more than others) had a focus on security and sought to protect themselves from being assigned to a lower position or rank. But those who looked for "absolute" outcomes (overall value) had a "growth" focus, one that goes after maximum positive results.
Jun Gu, the lead author of the research, noted that "People with a security focus also tend to walk away from economic deals that suggest they have low status, even if walking away means earning less money than they could have."
In one experiment, participants were offered $1 but were also told that the party making the offer would get $9. Even though they would have pocketed an additional $1, some 48% of those with a security focus rejected the offer, whereas only 17% of those with a growth focus turned the offer down.
Previous research by Prof. Leonardelli and his collaborators has shown that, in negotiations, those with a growth focus tend to set higher goals, are more aggressive in their negotiating, and ultimately attain better gains for all those involved.
"People with a growth focus appear to more easily move back and forth between cooperation and competition," because they have no special fears or concerns about their own security, says Prof. Leonardelli.
If governments want to pursue economic policies that promote growth, the study's findings suggest people first need to feel secure enough to support and participate in those policies, says Prof. Leonardelli.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Jun Gu, Vanessa K. Bohns, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli. Regulatory focus and interdependent economic decision-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.11.008
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
KAUFMAN, Texas (Reuters) - Brandi Fernandez slipped into the Kaufman County Courthouse in her first full day as interim district attorney on Tuesday, taking over a job that authorities believe got her predecessor and one of her colleagues killed.
Praised as a smart, tough litigator and a fierce advocate for child victims of crime, Fernandez declined to address reporters and remained under close protection inside the courthouse throughout the day. A police cruiser was parked outside her single-family home surrounded by trees on Monday and Tuesday.
Atop her agenda was investigating the targeted killings of former District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife on Saturday and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse on January 31.
As first assistant district attorney under McLelland, Fernandez, 42, was named to the interim job on Monday, after having worked in the office for nearly a decade.
Just before stepping into the job, Fernandez exuded calm, a colleague said.
"She's not the kind to appear rattled or look that way even if she is," said attorney Scott Gray, 35, a former Sherman County prosecutor whose wife was once Fernandez's trial partner. "She's very calm and collected. Don't think I've ever heard her raise her voice or seem disheveled."
Authorities believe the McLellands' killer intended to send a message. Mike and Cynthia McLelland each suffered multiple gunshot wounds at their home, and sheriff's deputies found cartridge casings next to their bodies, according to an affidavit reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.
The McLelland killings came just two months after McLelland vowed to capture the killer of Hasse, who was shot dead near the town square.
The twin homicides have rocked mostly rural Kaufman County on the eastern outskirts of Dallas, and several law enforcement officials have called them a direct attack on the criminal justice system.
ARYAN BROTHERHOOD SPECULATION
Authorities have yet to identify any suspects while people in Kaufman speculate it was the work of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang that had been the target of 34 indictments stemming from a task force that included Kaufman County prosecutors.
The racketeering charges accused the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas of exerting control over prison populations and neighborhoods through intimidation and violence and involvement in three murders, multiple attempted murders, kidnappings, assaults, and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine.
A Houston-based federal prosecutor was withdrawing from his role in the multiagency task force that brought the racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Texas said on Tuesday.
The spokeswoman would not elaborate on Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman's reasoning for withdrawing, saying only that the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Texas would continue to prosecute the case.
CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN
Fernandez, who received her law degree from Texas Tech University in 1996, will hold the interim job 21 days unless Republican Governor Rick Perry appoints a replacement to fill out the rest of McLelland's term before then.
It was unknown whether Fernandez, who registered as a Republican in Kaufman County in 2005, was under consideration for the more formal appointment that would last until coming up for election in 2014.
"If you're a victim of a criminal act, and it involves a child, the last person you want to talk to is Ms. Fernandez. She's a real strong opponent of crimes against children," Gray said.
"She's tried murder cases, drug cases, pretty much anything you can think of, but what's near and dear to her heart is prosecuting crimes against children," Gray said.
Criminal defense attorney Eric Smenner, who has known Fernandez eight years and defended cases she prosecuted, said she was always well-prepared at trial.
"I've tried a lot of cases in 16 years and of all the prosecutors in Kaufman she is among the top, an excellent prosecutor," Smenner said.
Bobby Aga, 68, an insurance agent and longtime Kaufman resident who observed Fernandez while serving on a grand jury, called her sharp and insightful. "She really knows how to get to the core of a thing."
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Mark Lipinski came to the oral surgeon's office here on March 21 there is wisdom teeth removed. He never went home the paramedics report quotes doctor Stephen Paul is saying the patient began to wake up and -- -- during the procedure and was given Pro -- -- He gave him Propofol. Which is ironically about the same thing that killed Michael Jackson Lipinski stop breathing CPR was initiated and 911 call when the medics. Did that first most basic thing which was -- as their way they found. Bloody -- three days later mark Lipinski was pronounced -- Tony Kaiser is a close family friend speaking to us by phone from Pittsburgh it's. All too much to get the mind around that -- 24 year old goes on for. General procedures and and -- on the stretcher and never replied it's it's just unfathomable and even more so -- for what this young man he was. Just it's wonderful wonderful -- Lewinsky's family and friends want answers I really pray to god that there -- element investigation of the -- -- doctor Paul wouldn't speak to me but his attorney issued a statement reading in part. Immediate measures were undertaken to revive the patient as soon as the patient began to the compensate the reason for the -- An autopsy is pending. Steve Fiorina ten news.
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Apr. 2, 2013 ? What effects will the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology have on the conservation of nature? The ecological and ethical challenges stemming from this question will require a new and continuing dialogue between members of the synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation communities, according to authors of a new paper.
According to the paper, the field of synthetic biology -- a discipline that utilizes chemically synthesized DNA to create organisms that address human needs -- is developing rapidly, with billions of dollars being invested annually. Many extol the virtues of synthetic biology as providing potential solutions to human health problems, food security, and energy needs. Advocates also see in synthetic biology tools for combating climate change and water deficits. Critics warn that genetically modified organisms could pose a danger to native species and natural ecosystems. The paper's authors assert that, in any scenario, a dialogue on how to use and restrict synthetic biology methods and products must be initiated for the benefit of the world's societies and decision makers.
The authors of the essay -- published in the online journal PLOS Biology -- include: Kent Redford of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Archipelago Consulting; Bill Adams of the University of Cambridge; and Georgina M. Mace of University College London (UCL).
"At present, the synthetic biology and conservation communities are largely strangers to one another, even though they both share many of the same concerns and goals," said Kent Redford, lead author of the article. "An open discussion between the two communities is needed to help identify areas of collaboration on a topic that will likely change the relationship of humans with the natural world."
The authors of the paper, along with other scientists and conservationists, will discuss the potential implications that synthetic biology may have on the natural world and conservation at the Synthetic Biology and Conservation Conference, convening at Clare College in Cambridge, England, on April 9-11.
John Robinson, WCS Chief Conservation Officer, said: "Synthetic biology is an extremely important and burgeoning field, but its consequences to biodiversity and conservation are currently poorly understood. By bringing together the best thinkers in these two disciplines we hope to gain a better understanding on synthetic biology's opportunities -- and potential impacts -- to conservation."
Co-author Bill Adams of the University of Cambridge, said: "Our strategies for conserving ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity, formulated over the past century, are profoundly challenged by synthetic biology. The implications of this emerging field must be incorporated into conservation theory and practice if efforts to save biodiversity are to be effective."
The authors explain the need for new strategies in the conservation community to cope with the challenges of synthetic biology. They highlight five emerging issues requiring discussions and policy decisions by conservation scientists and practitioners. They include:
The possibilities of recreating extinct species.
How synthetic organisms will interact with existing species.
Our current definition of what "natural" is.
Using synthetic biology to produce natural services for humans (e.g. carbon sequestration, pollution control).
The use of synthetic life for private benefits, as in the applications for industrial processes, agriculture, and aquaculture; how will a balance be struck between private risk and gain vs. public benefit and safety?
Co-author Georgina M. Mace of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, UCL, said: "The discussion between conservation and synthetic biology is a necessary one. We need to have a clear-eyed examination of the issues and decisions that could alter life on Earth."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wildlife Conservation Society.
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Journal Reference:
Kent H. Redford, William Adams, Georgina M. Mace. Synthetic Biology and Conservation of Nature: Wicked Problems and Wicked Solutions. PLoS Biology, 2013; 11 (4): e1001530 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001530
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.
Microsoft announced today via its blog that it will be selling its Mediaroom properties to Ericsson, in a deal that will see Ericsson become the dominant IPTV player in the industry with over 25 percent market share. Mediaroom operates as a pretty much separate company from Microsoft, with its own HQ in Mountain View and around 400 employees, and powers TV offerings like AT&T U-verse, as well as services from Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telus. The deal clears the deck for Microsoft fo go all-in on Xbox as the focal point of its own TV efforts.
On Friday, veteran journalist 
The total number of registered domain names passed 250 million in the last quarter of 2012, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief. More than 6 million domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total to 252 million worldwide. The basic .com domains, of course, make up the majority of registered domain names. By the end of December users had registered 106.2 million .com domains, as well as 14.9 million .net addresses. The .com and .net top-level domains (TLDs) also accounted for the majority of newly registered domain names. In total, 8 million .com and .net TLDs were registered during the fourth quarter of 2012, up slightly from the 7.9 million that were registered in the year-ago quarter. About 21 percent of .com and .net websites, by the way, are just one-page sites and 15 percent are registered but don’t point to a working site at all. Outside of those two TLDs, country code top-level domains grew another 5 percent quarter over quarter and 21.6 percent year-over-year to a total of 110.2 million domain names, with China driving quite a bit of this growth. Indeed, China is now the seventh-largest TLD, according to Verisign’s data. Top TLDs: .COM, .DE, .NET and .TK Here is the full running order of?the largest TLDs: The largest TLDs in order by zone size were .com, .de (Germany), .net, .tk (Tokelau), .uk (United Kingdom), .org, .cn (China), .info, .nl (Netherlands) and .ru (Russian Federation). The one domain that probably stands out here is .tk, the top-level domain of Tokelau. These .tk domain names, which are available for free through Freedom Registry,?have a bit of a reputation for hosting phishing sites, but chances are that the lure of a free domain name is driving most of these registrations.
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Public release date: 4-Apr-2013
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