The Powerball lottery jackpot jumped to $400 million after nobody won in Saturday night's drawing. The numbers drawn Saturday were?21-24-36-42-45 with Powerball 15.
There were no winners of the big prize, and the jackpot for the next drawing is now estimated at $400 million, Powerball officials said.?That would be worth more than $230 million before taxes if taken as a lump sum, Powerball said.
Tickets worth $2 million each were sold in Florida and Texas for Saturday's drawing, and $1 million tickets were sold in five states.
The pot had reached $300 million, bringing out lots of ticket buyers aiming to strike it rich.
?We?ve got the winning ticket, right here,? one man buying a ticket at a San Diego-area store told NBCSanDiego.com before the drawing. ?It?s going to help a lot of people.?
Or not.?
While $400 million is a lot, it?s not close to a lottery record. The largest prize ever was $656 million won in the Mega Millions contest on March 30, 2012. The biggest Powerball jackpot was $590.5 million, won in Florida in May by an 84-year-old widow.
How many laws has California passed, how many verdicts have its juries reached, how many social movements has it launched that other people in other states consider unjust or vile and would like to punish with a boycott?
That?s one of the questions members of The Times' editorial board asked one another in May 2010 when we were considering whether to weigh in for or against a boycott of Arizona to send a message of protest against SB 1070, our neighboring state?s strict anti-illegal immigration law.
And it?s a question that comes up again now, shortly before the Legislature is to take up Assemblyman Chris Holden?s proposed joint resolution calling for a boycott of Florida over the acquittal of George Zimmerman and -- or -- that state?s ?stand your ground? law.
Boycotts are a tricky business. Sometimes there are few options but to cut off contact, trade and any other connection with a government that has acted offensively or poses a danger; even then, a boycott is problematic. Liberals were angry at President Reagan?s policy of constructive engagement with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Conservatives were unhappy with a succession of presidents? pursuit of d?tente with the Soviet Union. Engage and persuade? Or isolate and punish? In international relations, nations go case by case, step by step.
Within the United States, boycotts are trickier still. What sense does it make, really, to launch an economic war between the states because the people or government of one is unhappy with the people or government of another? It may be that some people gave up avocados and trips to Disneyland or Malibu after voters here adopted Proposition 8, or Proposition 13. Or after juries here acquitted O.J. Simpson, or the officers who beat Rodney King. Or because of our abortion laws. Or any one of numerous slights, injustices or differences of opinion.
But if entire states actually turned their backs on California for every foolish or unfair thing we did, we?d either be pariahs or a population of unthinking, go-along-to-get-along people too scared of boycotts to think for ourselves.
Still -- is it impossible to imagine one state having laws or taking actions that are so repulsive that we want our government here to completely disengage? If apartheid was still practiced in some Southern state, for example, wouldn?t we embrace a boycott until the laws there were changed?
Boycotts of the segregated buses in Montgomery, Ala., launched the modern civil rights movement, and were conducted with the full weight of moral authority. But they were conducted not by some neighboring state but by the riders who were directly affected by the unjust and demeaning laws that mandated segregation, not by a sister state looking on from a safe distance.
The Times' editorial board is weighing in Sunday with an editorial opposing Holden?s call for a boycott of Florida. We don?t like that state?s ?stand your ground? law because we believe that it gives too much benefit of the doubt to shooters and not enough to their victims. But a boycott in response seems unfair. First, if the problem to be addressed is the law, why call for the boycott now, in the wake of the verdict, instead of when the law was passed, or when it was first cited in connection with this case?
And second, there are some 20 other states with ?stand your ground? laws that are at least as likely as Florida?s to encourage people to shoot rather than to avoid conflict and killing. Why target Florida?
The answer might be because that?s where Zimmerman needlessly followed, confronted and fatally shot Trayvon Martin. But Zimmerman did not invoke the ?stand your ground? law in his defense. Jury instructions used language from the law, but on that point they were not much different from self-defense instructions used in many states without ?stand your ground? laws, including California.
There is a national dialogue about this killing in particular -- regardless of what the shooter was thinking at the time -- because of race, and because of a history of laws that appear evenhanded on their face but that have been applied unequally against African Americans. The killing and the verdict can result in dialogue, understanding and a continuing effort for equal justice under the law, or they can result merely in a mutual turning of backs -- American against American, state against state. Holden?s proposed boycott resolution, to be introduced when the Legislature returns from vacation Aug. 5, is intended to promote the former, but it seems more likely geared toward the latter.
As for the Arizona boycott, The Times ended up going a different way, calling for Major League Baseball to take the very limited, message-sending step of moving the All-Star Game to another state.
It didn?t work.
ALSO:
Why try George Zimmerman?
Five reasons to stay away from Texas right now
Morrison: 'Fruitvale Station's' Ryan Coogler, the message maker
Despite concerns raised, official says employment was handled properly.
York, PA -
The Central York School Board president said there was nothing improper about the hiring of the superintendent's son for a teaching position, despite concerns being raised.
The board's July 8 agenda included the hiring of Michael S. Snell II as a health and physical education teacher at Central York Middle School. Michael Wagner, board president, confirmed that Snell II is the son of district Supt. Michael Snell and said the seven board members present approved the hiring.
Anne Kahlbaugh, who will appear on the ballot for Central York School Board in the fall, said the matter was brought to her attention by a community member so she looked into it. She wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the decision, saying there were likely more experienced candidates unaffiliated with administrators.
She believes the board violated a policy on employment that states "Political patronage or favoritism based on family relationship at no time will enter into the employment, assignment or promotion of individuals."
The decision is a "blur of the trust" given the board, she said Thursday. "I just feel more due diligence needed to be done in that area."
Wagner said that he looked into the matter more because questions were being asked. In his opinion, that policy
has not been violated.
Board members knew the item would be on the agenda, he said, and at his request, Supt. Snell spoke to each board member prior to the meeting and told them they could speak to the hiring principal if they wanted. He knows of one board member that did.
Wagner said he sat down with the assistant superintendent, who was involved in the final interview process, and was convinced no one was pressured to hire the younger Snell.
The superintendent was not involved in the interviewing process, Wagner said. He said he heard a summary of the five finalists and was convinced administrators picked who they believed to be the best candidate for the job.
"I think I can appreciate the concern," he said, but he has faith in those doing the hiring that they "didn't feel compelled or pressured to make the decision they did."
Wagner said he also heard concerns about there being more experienced candidates. But he said Snell II has a teaching certificate that makes him qualified. Every teacher was a first-year teacher at some point, he said.
Kahlbaugh thinks the decision should be revisited.
"I know decisions are hard ... this seems to be pretty straightforward," she said.
Snell II could not be reached. District spokesman Julie Romig the district and superintendent would not have further comment.
Online
The Central York School Board posts meeting agendas, policies and other documents online.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Researchers have identified a genetic cause of severe obesity that, though rare, raises new questions about weight gain and energy use in the general obese population. The research involved genetic surveys of several groups of obese humans and experiments in mice.
Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. He is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. Scoble joined Microsoft in 2003, and although he often promoted Microsoft products like Tablet PCs and Windows Vista, he also frequently criticized his own employer and praised its competitors like Apple and Google. Scoble is the author of Naked Conversations, a book on how blogs are changing...
Every morning my breakfast routine starts with the comic strips. Opinions, local news, and sports will follow in whatever order I see fit, but without question the comics always come first. For a lot of people, myself included, the comic strips were what first got me interested in comic books. Some of the comics that came out decades ago still appear in the paper today, whether they are dailies or Sundays only, with still a tremendous fan following. One of the things we take for granted nowadays is being able to purchase a collection of the restored older comics, be it Prince Valiant or Tarzan, but back in the 40s and 50s readers of all ages weren?t afforded such luxuries. Today I?ll be focusing on the Best Archival Collection/Project?Strips category. If you need a reminder of what?s been nominated, you can find the entire list right here, and see what I chose last time right here.
Keep in mind I cannot vote for who wins (nor can you, probably), as per the rules. However, that?s not keeping me from being vocal regardless!
Who is not eligible to vote?
Comics press or reviewers (unless they are nominees)
Non-creative publisher staff members (PR, marketing, assistants, etc.)
Fans
Before I get back to stapling a bunch of Garfield Minus Garfield strips together so I can be eligible for next year, let the games begin!
Best Archival Collection/Project?Strips
Alex Raymond?s Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, vol. 2, edited by Dean Mullaney (IDW/Library of American Comics)
Review copy unavailable.
Mister Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann?s Sprightly Cousin, by Johnny Gruelle, edited by Rick Marschall (Fantagraphics)
Collecting Twee Deedle strips as well as the earlier comics and illustrations of Johnny Gruelle, this book is filled with wonderful adventures that were enjoyed by all ages back in the day when newspaper strips reigned supreme. Feeling a little like Little Nemo at times, Gruelle was a master storyteller as youngsters Dickie and Dolly learned about nature with the wood sprite Twee Deedle. Also his bird?s-eye view pieces were obviously influential to the Where?s Wally? artist Martin Handford.
Percy Crosby?s Skippy, vol. 1, edited by Jared Gardner and Dean Mullaney (IDW/Library of American Comics)
Review copy unavailable.
Pogo, vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash, by Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly and Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
The second volume (of 12) of the dailies and Sunday strips following everyone?s favorite possum of the Okefenokee Swamp, Pogo. This collection is edited by Walt Kelly?s daughter Carolyn, and you can really feel the attention to detail in making sure the comics are crisp and colorful. Bona Fide Balderdash is a bona fide hit with Pogo fans.
Roy Crane?s Captain Easy: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics)
Lickety Whop! Filled with adventures at sea, exploring for treasure, and battling pirates, Captain Easy was one of the most action-packed Sunday strips of its time. In this third volume the action continues as Easy and Wash travel the globe getting themselves into some pretty precarious situations. The coloring is divine, and this collection does Crane?s storytelling justice.
Who I think should win:
Roy Crane?s Captain Easy: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics)
Before Indiana Jones, before Captain Action, there was Captain Easy. Yes, that name wouldn?t go over so well in today?s society, but after seeing how manly he is you wouldn?t think twice to make fun. This collection in particular takes our adventurer and his friends all over the world, and I could only imagine how painful it was back then waiting for the next Sunday to come. The coloring is fantastic, and looks like it was fresh from the original printer.
Crane?s illustrations really brought life and energy to the Sunday strips, and future collections are in great hands over at Fantagraphics.
?
Who I think could win: Pogo, vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash, by Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly and Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
Starring some of the most popular anthropomorphic characters in comics, it?s no wonder that Walt Kelly?s Pogo has inspired generations of storytellers since its initial launch in the 1950s. In this second volume, you can really see where Kelly gets into his routine as the characters become livelier, and the stories sometimes blissfully wackier.
This collection in particular includes the famous Pogo running for president storyline (?I Go Pogo?). The meticulously-restored strips do this collection great justice.
?
Who I think should have been nominated: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
A boy and his tiger. They go on adventures, travel to other planets, and form the best club ever known to man; G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS).
?
Who do you think should win / been nominated?
Cameron Hatheway is the host of Cammy?s Comic Corner and Arts & Entertainment Editor of the Sonoma State STAR. You can sell him a swink on Twitter @CamComicCorner.
Frances Beinecke is the president of NRDC, served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, and holds a leadership role in several environmental organizations. She contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The fires burning around Colorado Springs, Colo., in the past week have been called the worst in the state's history. Nearly 40,000 people were forced to evacuate their houses and two people lost their lives in the flames.
Resident Tim MacDonald told the Los Angeles Times that his wife had just 10 minutes to flee their home when she saw a curtain of black smoke swing toward them. She grabbed her son and her dogs and left as fast as she could. The MacDonalds later learned their house was one of 485 burned to the ground. In some areas, Sheriff Terry Maketa said it "looks like a nuclear bomb went off."
The West is no stranger to wildfires, but in recent years, climate change has packed many fires with greater intensity. Warmer temperatures and drier conditions are contributing to longer fire seasons and bigger blazes. Those trends mean more evacuations, more destroyed homes, and more deadly risks for residents and firefighters.
[The 7 Hottest Climate Change Stories of 2012 ]
What does climate change mean in your community?
You may have witnessed strange weather in recent years, but aren't sure how it is tied to larger patterns or record-breaking events. NRDC has released a new mapping tool that allows you to enter your ZIP code and learn what climate disruption is doing to your hometown.
Maybe you live in the Northeast like I do, and have see homes and businesses flooded by severe downpours in 2010, Hurricane Irene in 2011, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Maybe you live in one of the more than 2,500 counties declared a disaster area in 2012 because of the worst drought since the Dust Bowl.
Maybe you live in one of the cities stretching between Brownsville and Baltimore that wilted in last summer's heat wave. July was the hottest month on record for the contiguous United States and more than 120 deaths were directly tied to high temperatures.
No matter where we live, climate change is making its presence known. For even if your community hasn't been hit by a severe storm or drought yet, you still pay a price: The government spent nearly $100 billion to respond to last year's extreme weather events. That's more than $1,100 per average U.S. taxpayer.
Our communities ? and our budgets ? cannot continue to bear the burden of unchecked climate change.
We must become more resilient in the face of climate disruption. Tracking new weather patterns can help residents, businesses, and government officials better prepare. I recently spoke at a conference hosted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), where we discussed how some Rhode Island towns are already buying out buildings in floodplains and assessing what sea-level rise will mean for public infrastructure such as ferry terminals. Local officials around the country are taking similar steps.
But, even as we plan for extreme events, we must also tackle the root causes of climate change. President Barack Obama got us moving down this road when he issued new fuel economy standards that will cut carbon emissions from new cars in half by 2025. Now it's time for a national push to curb global warming pollution.
Six months ago, Obama said at his second Inauguration, "We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations." He echoed those words in his State of the Union address in February. Public reports are now indicating that the president will make an announcement on climate change sometime in the next few weeks. The NRDC is looking forward to hearing his plan, which needs to include cutting carbon pollution from new and existing power plants.
Americans are looking to Obama for leadership. Last week, five senators from the states most affected by Superstorm Sandy called on the president to reduce carbon pollution from new and existing power plants. Those senators represent people who felt the destructive power of extreme weather firsthand. They want to ensure the United States is using the weapons they have to fight the threat of climate change.
Research has shown that cutting carbon pollution from power plants and reducing our society's dependence on dirty fuels can help shield our communities from the worst of this kind of destruction. Waiting to put these solutions in place is like waiting to flee a fire. The time to act is now.
NRDC has set up a site for the public to send a message to President Obama to issue a clear and effective climate action plan.
Read Beinecke's most recent Op-Ed: Why the Bering Strait Is Under Siege.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com .
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Learn basketball skills, play games, have fun. Campers will be supervised at lunch in the NLC cafeteria, and can either bring a lunch or money to buy lunch at our Subway. There will be optional swimming breaks at the college's Olympic-sized pool, so bring a swimsuit and a towel!
There is a $125 fee which covers the week long camp.
For further information contact Coach Tim McGraw: 972-273-3521 or tmcgraw@dcccd.edu?
Some say that Beijing deliberately exaggerates the terrorist threat in order to justify the iron grip it keeps on the Muslim majority province of Xinjiang in?western China.
By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / April 24, 2013
A woman looks up as a dust storm hits Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, last week. Xinjiang, once a predominantly Muslim province in China's far west, has seen massive settlement by ethnic Han immigrants in recent decades.
Reuters
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Mystery surrounds official Chinese reports Wednesday of a violent clash between ?suspected terrorists? and the authorities in the restive Muslim province of Xinjiang yesterday that left 21 people dead, including 15 officials.
Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford
Beijing Bureau Chief
Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
According to a statement on the provincial government website, a group ?planning to conduct violent terrorist activities? armed with knives seized three local officials who had surprised them in a house near the city of Kashgar (see map).
They then killed the three hostages and 12 of the policemen and local community workers who came to the rescue, setting fire to the house before armed police regained control of the situation, killing six of the suspects and arresting eight of them, the statement said.
The Chinese authorities have given only sketchy details of the incident, and have not accused any particular group of responsibility. Beijing has previously blamed Islamist separatists for earlier violent attacks on officials.
Xinjiang, once a predominantly Muslim province in China?s far west, has seen massive settlement by ethnic Han immigrants in recent decades. Local people complain that their culture and language are being eroded and that Han now outnumber original inhabitants, who are ethnic Uighurs, with linguistic and cultural ties to central Asian peoples.
Violence flares sporadically, despite a stiflingly heavy handed police and army presence. In 2009 almost 200 people were killed ? mostly ethnic Han ? in deadly rioting in the provincial capital of Urumqi. Last month the government announced that courts in Xinjiang had sentenced 20 men to prison terms as long as life for plotting jihadi attacks.
The men ?had their thoughts poisoned by religious extremism,? according to the Xinjiang provincial website, and had ?spread Muslim religious propaganda.?
Determining the truth behind such allegations, and incidents such as Tuesday?s clash,?is difficult. Chinese media are not allowed to carry reports other than those by the state-run news agency Xinhua and foreign reporters have found themselves restricted and harassed when trying to work in Xinjiang.
A leading Uighur activist, Dilxat Raxit, who lives in Germany, questioned the official account, telling the AP that local residents had reported that the police sparked the incident by shooting a Uighur youth during a house search.
It was not clear how the suspects, armed only with knives, had managed to kill 15 policemen and local officials before they were subdued.
China has often accused a shadowy group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement of being behind violence in Xinjiang, but foreign observers are dubious, with some saying that Beijing deliberately exaggerates the terrorist threat in order to justify the iron grip it keeps on Xinjiang.
The US State Department put the group on its terrorist watch list in 2002, but has since removed it amid doubts about whether the group is a real organization.?
REDDING, Calif. (AP) ? A Northern California grocery store owner is trying to profit from a suspected thief's botched burglary attempt that was caught on video and went viral.
Footage shows the man breaking the Redding store's window last month and tripping twice as he ran away.
Now store owner Kent Pfrimmer has turned it into a television commercial for his business, Kent's Meats and Groceries.
The Record Searchlight of Redding reports (http://bit.ly/11CzlcU ) that the ad for the store's pastrami features footage of the suspect throwing something at the store's window. The sound of shattering glass can be heard before pastrami appears on camera, followed by the voice-over: "So good, some people will do just about anything to get more."
A call to Redding police to check on the investigation was not immediately returned.
Pushing the boundaries of transcriptionPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Isabelle Kling isabelle.kling@embl.de 49-622-138-78355 European Molecular Biology Laboratory
A new level of variation in messenger RNAs exposed
Like musicians in an orchestra who have the same musical score but start and finish playing at different intervals, cells with the same genes start and finish transcribing them at different points in the genome. For the first time, researchers at EMBL have described the striking diversity of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that such start and end variation produces, even from the simple genome of yeast cells. Their findings, published today in Nature, shed new light on the importance of mRNA boundaries in determining the functional potential of genes.
Hundreds of thousands of unique mRNA transcripts are generated from a genome of only about 8000 genes, even with the same genome sequence and environmental condition. "We knew that transcription could lead to a certain amount of diversity, but we were not expecting it to be so vast," explains Lars Steinmetz, who led the project. "Based on this diversity, we would expect that no yeast cell has the same set of messenger RNA molecules as its neighbour."
The traditional understanding of transcription was that mRNA boundaries were relatively fixed. While it has long been known that certain parts of mRNAs can be selectively 'spliced' out, this phenomenon is very rare in baker's yeast, meaning that the textbook one gene - one mRNA transcript relationship should hold. Recent studies have suggested that things aren't quite that simple, inspiring the EMBL scientists to create a new technique to capture both the start and end points of single mRNA molecules. They now discovered that each gene could be transcribed into dozens or even hundreds of unique mRNA molecules, each with different boundaries.
This suggests that not only transcript abundance, but also transcript boundaries should be considered when assessing gene function. Altering the boundaries of mRNA molecules can affect how long they stay intact, cause them to produce different proteins, or direct them or their protein products to different locations, which can have a profound biological impact. Diversifying mRNA transcript boundaries within a group of cells, therefore, could equip them to adapt to different external challenges.
The researchers expect that such an extent of boundary variation will also be found in more complex organisms, including humans, where some examples are already known to affect key biological functions. The technology to measure these variations across the entire genome as well as a catalogue of boundaries in a well-studied organism are a good starting point for further research. "Now that we are aware of how much diversity there is, we can start to figure out what factors control it," points out Vicent Pelechano, who performed the study with Wu Wei. Wei adds: "Our technique also exposed new mRNAs that other techniques could not distinguish. It will be exciting to investigate how these and general variation in transcript boundaries actually extend the functional capacity of a genome."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Pushing the boundaries of transcriptionPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Isabelle Kling isabelle.kling@embl.de 49-622-138-78355 European Molecular Biology Laboratory
A new level of variation in messenger RNAs exposed
Like musicians in an orchestra who have the same musical score but start and finish playing at different intervals, cells with the same genes start and finish transcribing them at different points in the genome. For the first time, researchers at EMBL have described the striking diversity of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that such start and end variation produces, even from the simple genome of yeast cells. Their findings, published today in Nature, shed new light on the importance of mRNA boundaries in determining the functional potential of genes.
Hundreds of thousands of unique mRNA transcripts are generated from a genome of only about 8000 genes, even with the same genome sequence and environmental condition. "We knew that transcription could lead to a certain amount of diversity, but we were not expecting it to be so vast," explains Lars Steinmetz, who led the project. "Based on this diversity, we would expect that no yeast cell has the same set of messenger RNA molecules as its neighbour."
The traditional understanding of transcription was that mRNA boundaries were relatively fixed. While it has long been known that certain parts of mRNAs can be selectively 'spliced' out, this phenomenon is very rare in baker's yeast, meaning that the textbook one gene - one mRNA transcript relationship should hold. Recent studies have suggested that things aren't quite that simple, inspiring the EMBL scientists to create a new technique to capture both the start and end points of single mRNA molecules. They now discovered that each gene could be transcribed into dozens or even hundreds of unique mRNA molecules, each with different boundaries.
This suggests that not only transcript abundance, but also transcript boundaries should be considered when assessing gene function. Altering the boundaries of mRNA molecules can affect how long they stay intact, cause them to produce different proteins, or direct them or their protein products to different locations, which can have a profound biological impact. Diversifying mRNA transcript boundaries within a group of cells, therefore, could equip them to adapt to different external challenges.
The researchers expect that such an extent of boundary variation will also be found in more complex organisms, including humans, where some examples are already known to affect key biological functions. The technology to measure these variations across the entire genome as well as a catalogue of boundaries in a well-studied organism are a good starting point for further research. "Now that we are aware of how much diversity there is, we can start to figure out what factors control it," points out Vicent Pelechano, who performed the study with Wu Wei. Wei adds: "Our technique also exposed new mRNAs that other techniques could not distinguish. It will be exciting to investigate how these and general variation in transcript boundaries actually extend the functional capacity of a genome."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Eating chocolate may change the immune system in ways that aggravate acne, a small new study from the Netherlands suggests.
In the study, researchers collected blood from seven healthy people before and after they ate 1.7 ounces of chocolate, each day for four days. (The chocolate contained about 30 percent cocoa.)
The researchers then exposed the blood cells to bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes, which contribute to acne when they grow inside clogged pores and cause pores to become inflamed, and to Staphylococcus aureus, another skin bacteria that can aggravate acne.
After eating chocolate, the participants' blood cells produced more interleukin-1b, a marker of immune system inflammation, when exposed to Propionibacterium acnes. This suggests chocolate consumption could increase the inflammation that contributes to acne, the researchers said.
In addition, eating chocolate increased production of another immune system factor called interleukin 10 after exposure to Staphylococcus aureus. Interleukin 10 is thought to lower our bodies' defenses against microorganisms, and thus, higher levels of interleukin 10 could create conditions that allow bacteria to infect pimples, and worsen them, the researchers said.
However, the results are preliminary, and the jury is still out on whether indulging in the sweet treat can really prompt a breakout.
Future studies should look into which components of chocolate (fats, sugars, etc.) might be responsible for the effects, and whether fat-free chocolate would have a different effect, the researchers said.
A 2011 study also found that chocolate consumption worsened acne, but the study involved only 10 men who consumed pure chocolate.
Although there's a lot of talk about chocolate and other foods playing a role in acne, there's very little evidence to show they do, said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, who specializes in acne treatments.
"I think there's 10 times more discussion about it than there is data," Shinkai said.
There is some evidence that so-called high glycemic foods, such as white bread, which release sugar very quickly into the bloodstream, may be linked to acne, Shinkai said. For instance, one study found that a population in Papua New Guinea with a low glycemic diet had no cases of acne across all ages, while in the United States more than 80 percent of teenagers have acne. Other studies looking at a possible link between diary products and acne have had conflicting results, Shinkai said.
While there may be a subset of people whose acne is influenced by diet, this is probably not true for everyone, Shinkai said. Multiple factors contribute to acne, including genetics, hormones and certain medications. [See Acne in Women Can Signal Hormone Problems.]
Shinkai said most dermatologists do not recommend dietary changes to help with acne, unless a patient is certain that a particular food is linked with his or her acne. Shinkai cautioned against broad dietary restrictions, such as avoiding diary, because diary products are important sources of calcium and vitamin D for many people, and the nutritional benefits of the products outweigh the impact of acne, she said.
Eating small amounts of chocolate has been linked with health benefits, such as a reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.
The new study, conducted by researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, was published online March 1 in the journal Cytokine.?
Pass it on: For some people, chocolate consumption may worsen acne .
Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook& Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.
Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Suppose someone is considering buying a home, and the furnace works but is getting on in years. The seller is not required to replace it, but the potential buyer is leery about taking on a home in which the furnace might be on its last legs.
That is where home warranties, also called home service contracts, come into play. These guarantees are designed to protect a homeowner from unexpected repair costs for major appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers. The home service contract is the ideal solution, and the new homeowner has the option of extending it beyond that first year.
A home service contract or warranty, which usually lasts one year, offers repairs or replacements for the major appliances and systems in a home. While coverage options vary, a home service contract usually includes interior plumbing, heating and electrical systems, water heaters, ductwork, dishwashers, stoves, washer/dryer, pool equipment, refrigerators, air-conditioning, garage-door openers, garbage disposals, and spa equipment. Typically, these contracts cost between $200 and $600. The cost varies by state and depends on the size and age of the property and the amount of coverage chosen.
Be careful, however, not to confuse these home warranties with the home warranty offered by builders, which guarantee the quality of the new-home construction itself, not the systems or appliances inside. While your home service contract will cover those appliances, most don?t cover home foundations, walls, structures, or finish.
While these contracts may seem like the ideal option when buying an older home, homeowners need to carefully read the fine print to avoid some loopholes?home service contracts are very specific.
Here are some things to watch out for, and what not to do because it could void your coverage:
? A mechanical failure that existed before the agreement was effective. Say, for instance, that the air conditioning hasn?t worked for five years. Summer comes around and the new homeowner tries to start it, only to realize he?s out of luck. In this case, repairs or replacement might not be covered. (Several firms do offer different levels of coverage that could cover your home?s preexisting conditions.)
? A failure not caused by normal wear and tear. If the family pet is using refrigerator coils as a chew toy, or if a raccoon has taken up residence in the air-conditioning unit, those repairs would not be covered.
? Inspectors finding asbestos, hazardous or toxic materials, or mold.
? Faulty workmanship on your appliances. Carefully research technicians. Check with the Better Business Bureau before choosing one to make sure it is a reputable company. Do not tackle any job on your own that you are not qualified for.
? An appliance has clearly been mistreated.
? Calling a repairman before the home warranty company gives approval for a repair or replacement. Always consult with the warranty company first.
? Changing the property use from residential to commercial. If the homeowner decides to convert the home into a beauty salon, the contract would be voided.
Follow these tips to get the most out of your home service contract:
? Make sure all appliances are installed properly, including those installed by a trained technician. Again, check with the Better Business Bureau if you are not sure about a technician.
? Take care of routine maintenance. Don?t let rust run wild. An annual maintenance plan for air conditioning and heating is a good idea; you can avoid the rush in summer and winter when everyone else needs help.
? Make sure multiple appliances are covered. Yes, your kitchen refrigerator is covered, but what about the backup fridge in the garage?
? Find a quality home inspector. This person will make sure everything is running the way it should before you finalize the home purchase.
? If you have a problem, remember to call your home service contract company before you call a contractor. The warranty company will not pay for a claim unless you call them first. They may suggest a contractor or let you choose your own, depending on the company policy.
? If a claim is denied, don?t take ?no? for an answer. Carefully review your policy and then ask to talk to a manager. Find out what has happened with similar situations to get the problem resolved.
Visit the National Home Service Contract Association for a complete list of all registered companies. The website also includes a consumer section for fraud reports or complaints.
We're still a bit away from Ultra HD becoming the standard for television. One of the things standing in the way is just how much bandwidth pushing that many pixels demands. SES recently demonstrated an Ultra HD transmission that uses the up and coming HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard, as opposed to the more established H.264. The 3,840 x 2,160 image was broadcast at a data rate of 20 Mbps, roughly a 50-percent improvement in encoding efficiency over H.264-based MPEG-4. The demonstration was performed with support from SES's partners, Harmonic and Broadcom, the latter of which provided the BCM7445-based decoding box used for pulling in the video. The tech still isn't quite ready for prime time, but we'd say a 4K House of Cards stream is probably closer than any of us realized.
Apr. 16, 2013 ? "Survival of the fittest" originally referred to natural selection in biological systems, but new research from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University scientists shows that this evolutionary theory also applies to technological systems.
Computational biologist Sergei Maslov, a research staff member in Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), holding appointments with Stony Brook University's Department of Physics and Astronomy and Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, worked with Tin Yau Pang, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook, to compare the frequency with which components "survive" in two complex systems: bacterial genomes and operating systems on Linux computers. Their work, "Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems," was published in the April 9 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Maslov, who received his PhD in Physics from Stony Brook in 1996, discussed the discovery on NPR's Marketplace Tech.
Maslov and Pang set out to determine not only why some specialized genes or computer programs are very common while others are fairly rare, but to see how many components in any system are so important that they can't be eliminated.
"If a bacteria genome doesn't have a particular gene, it will be dead on arrival," Maslov said. "How many of those genes are there? The same goes for large software systems. They have multiple components that work together and the systems require just the right components working together to thrive.'"
Using data from the massive sequencing of bacterial genomes, now a part of the Department of Energy's Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), the researchers examined the frequency of occurrence of genes in genomes of 500 bacterial species and found a surprising similarity with the frequency of installation of 200,000 Linux packages on more than 2 million individual computers. Linux is an open source software collaboration that allows designers to modify source code to create programs for public use.
The most frequently used components in both the biological and computer systems are those that allow for the most descendants. That is, the more a component is relied upon by others, the more likely it is to be required for full functionality of a system.
It may seem logical, but the surprising part of this finding is how universal it is.
"It is almost expected that the frequency of usage of any component is correlated with how many other components depend on it," said Maslov. "But we found that we can determine the number of crucial components -- those without which other components couldn't function -- by a simple calculation that holds true both in biological systems and computer systems."
For both the bacteria and the computing systems, take the square root of the interdependent components and you can find the number of key components that are so important that not a single other piece can get by without them.
The finding applies equally to these complex networks because they are both examples of open access systems with components that are independently installed.
"Bacteria are the ultimate BitTorrents of biology," he said, referring to a popular file-sharing protocol. "They have this enormous common pool of genes that they are freely sharing with each other. Bacterial systems can easily add or remove genes from their genomes through what's called horizontal gene transfer, a kind of file sharing between bacteria," Maslov said.
The same goes for Linux operating systems, which allow free installation of components built and shared by a multitude of designers independently of one another. The theory wouldn't hold true for, say, a Windows operating system, which only runs proprietary programs.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stony Brook University.
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Journal Reference:
T. Y. Pang, S. Maslov. Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; 110 (15): 6235 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217795110
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
UC Berkeley selected to build NASA's next space weather satellitePublic release date: 17-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
ICON to explore connection between upper atmosphere and ionosphere to predict space weather
NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, up to $200 million to build a satellite to determine how Earth's weather affects weather at the edge of space, in hopes of improving forecasts of extreme "space weather" that can disrupt global positioning satellites (GPS) and radio communications.
The satellite mission, called the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), will be designed, built and operated by scientists at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. Scheduled for launch in 2017, ICON will orbit 550 kilometers (345 miles) above Earth in the ionosphere: the edge of space where the sun ionizes the air to create constantly shifting streams and sheets of charged particles. These charged particles can interfere with GPS signals and radio signals that bounce off the ionosphere.
ICON will collect data needed to establish the connection between storms that occur near Earth's surface and space-weather storms, allowing scientists to better predict space weather. These results could help airliners, for example, which today cannot rely solely on GPS satellites to fly and land because signals from these satellites can be distorted by charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.
"Ten years ago, we had no idea that the ionosphere was affected and structured by storms in the lower atmosphere," said the project's principal investigator, Thomas Immel, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory. "We proposed ICON in response to this new realization."
NASA announced the award last week, along with another mission called the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD), which will image Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere from a commercial geosynchronous satellite.
"One of the frontier areas of heliophysics is the study of the interface between outer space and the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "These selected projects use innovative solutions to advance our knowledge of this relatively unexplored region. The two missions together will result in significantly more advances in our understanding of Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere than either would alone."
Until recently, Immel said, the ionosphere was thought to be affected primarily by solar wind particles emitted from the sun - that scours the upper atmosphere. When the sun is active and firing bursts of charged particles toward Earth, the ionosphere erupts in chaotic storms. But a slew of satellites orbiting Earth to study the sun, solar wind and Earth's magnetic field have now shown that Earth's space environment, specifically activity in the ionosphere, can't be explained solely by particles streaming from the sun.
"We know that the solar wind plays a big role in the ionosphere, but most of the time the sun is relatively quiet, and our space environment still varies quite a bit," he said. "We think that variability is coming from weather on our own planet, which can be very powerful."
This can happen, Immel said, when surface storms compress and heat the atmosphere, driving huge waves upward into space and causing charged particles to move across magnetic fields in unpredictable ways. This can also lead to extreme fluctuations of temperature in the ionosphere.
"There are huge waves at an altitude above 100 kilometers (63 miles), with amplitudes as large as 50 degrees Kelvin, where the average temperature is about 300 degrees Kelvin (77 degrees Fahrenheit) a 20-30 percent variation," he said. "That may sound small, but imagine a wave rolling through your neighborhood with a temperature swing of 100 degrees Kelvin, or 180 degrees Fahrenheit from freezing to boiling! These waves can change the composition of the upper atmosphere and how the ionosphere grows during the day."
ICON will explore these and other processes that control the dynamics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. One issue, for example, is why "North America is, in a way, like tornado alley for space," Immel said, where huge masses of ionized plasma roll over the country and disrupt GPS and other communications.
"We want to understand where this plasma comes from Is it generated in situ? Does it grow in outer space? Or are we pulling plasma up from lower latitudes like the Caribbean?" he said.
The satellite will operate in a circular orbit tilted 27 degrees from the equator and simultaneously map winds in the upper atmosphere and charged particle currents, called plasmas, in the ionosphere, a region that stretches from an altitude of about 85 to 600 kilometers (50 to 370 miles).
The instrument called MIGHTI (Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging), which will be built by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, will detect the aurora-like glow of air molecules and measure their temperature and speed via Doppler imaging. These winds routinely blow at 200 miles per hour in a part of the upper atmosphere called the thermosphere.
Two other instruments built at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory will simultaneously image the upper atmosphere in the far and extreme ultraviolet, while a fourth instrument from the University of Texas, Dallas, will measure the charged particles and flowing plasma at the location of the satellite.
"ICON's imaging capability, combined with its in situ measurements on the same spacecraft, gives a perspective of the coupled system that would otherwise require two or more orbiting observatories," he said.
UC Berkeley will control the spacecraft from its Mission Operations Center at the Space Sciences Laboratory, which currently operates the satellite missions THEMIS, ARTEMIS, RHESSI and NuSTAR, all NASA Explorer missions, and recently operated the FAST Explorer.
NASA is funding ICON through the Explorer program, the agency's oldest continuous program, designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the heliophysics and astrophysics programs in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
###
The ICON web site is http://icon.ssl.berkeley.edu/.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
UC Berkeley selected to build NASA's next space weather satellitePublic release date: 17-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
ICON to explore connection between upper atmosphere and ionosphere to predict space weather
NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, up to $200 million to build a satellite to determine how Earth's weather affects weather at the edge of space, in hopes of improving forecasts of extreme "space weather" that can disrupt global positioning satellites (GPS) and radio communications.
The satellite mission, called the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), will be designed, built and operated by scientists at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. Scheduled for launch in 2017, ICON will orbit 550 kilometers (345 miles) above Earth in the ionosphere: the edge of space where the sun ionizes the air to create constantly shifting streams and sheets of charged particles. These charged particles can interfere with GPS signals and radio signals that bounce off the ionosphere.
ICON will collect data needed to establish the connection between storms that occur near Earth's surface and space-weather storms, allowing scientists to better predict space weather. These results could help airliners, for example, which today cannot rely solely on GPS satellites to fly and land because signals from these satellites can be distorted by charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.
"Ten years ago, we had no idea that the ionosphere was affected and structured by storms in the lower atmosphere," said the project's principal investigator, Thomas Immel, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory. "We proposed ICON in response to this new realization."
NASA announced the award last week, along with another mission called the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD), which will image Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere from a commercial geosynchronous satellite.
"One of the frontier areas of heliophysics is the study of the interface between outer space and the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "These selected projects use innovative solutions to advance our knowledge of this relatively unexplored region. The two missions together will result in significantly more advances in our understanding of Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere than either would alone."
Until recently, Immel said, the ionosphere was thought to be affected primarily by solar wind particles emitted from the sun - that scours the upper atmosphere. When the sun is active and firing bursts of charged particles toward Earth, the ionosphere erupts in chaotic storms. But a slew of satellites orbiting Earth to study the sun, solar wind and Earth's magnetic field have now shown that Earth's space environment, specifically activity in the ionosphere, can't be explained solely by particles streaming from the sun.
"We know that the solar wind plays a big role in the ionosphere, but most of the time the sun is relatively quiet, and our space environment still varies quite a bit," he said. "We think that variability is coming from weather on our own planet, which can be very powerful."
This can happen, Immel said, when surface storms compress and heat the atmosphere, driving huge waves upward into space and causing charged particles to move across magnetic fields in unpredictable ways. This can also lead to extreme fluctuations of temperature in the ionosphere.
"There are huge waves at an altitude above 100 kilometers (63 miles), with amplitudes as large as 50 degrees Kelvin, where the average temperature is about 300 degrees Kelvin (77 degrees Fahrenheit) a 20-30 percent variation," he said. "That may sound small, but imagine a wave rolling through your neighborhood with a temperature swing of 100 degrees Kelvin, or 180 degrees Fahrenheit from freezing to boiling! These waves can change the composition of the upper atmosphere and how the ionosphere grows during the day."
ICON will explore these and other processes that control the dynamics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. One issue, for example, is why "North America is, in a way, like tornado alley for space," Immel said, where huge masses of ionized plasma roll over the country and disrupt GPS and other communications.
"We want to understand where this plasma comes from Is it generated in situ? Does it grow in outer space? Or are we pulling plasma up from lower latitudes like the Caribbean?" he said.
The satellite will operate in a circular orbit tilted 27 degrees from the equator and simultaneously map winds in the upper atmosphere and charged particle currents, called plasmas, in the ionosphere, a region that stretches from an altitude of about 85 to 600 kilometers (50 to 370 miles).
The instrument called MIGHTI (Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging), which will be built by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, will detect the aurora-like glow of air molecules and measure their temperature and speed via Doppler imaging. These winds routinely blow at 200 miles per hour in a part of the upper atmosphere called the thermosphere.
Two other instruments built at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory will simultaneously image the upper atmosphere in the far and extreme ultraviolet, while a fourth instrument from the University of Texas, Dallas, will measure the charged particles and flowing plasma at the location of the satellite.
"ICON's imaging capability, combined with its in situ measurements on the same spacecraft, gives a perspective of the coupled system that would otherwise require two or more orbiting observatories," he said.
UC Berkeley will control the spacecraft from its Mission Operations Center at the Space Sciences Laboratory, which currently operates the satellite missions THEMIS, ARTEMIS, RHESSI and NuSTAR, all NASA Explorer missions, and recently operated the FAST Explorer.
NASA is funding ICON through the Explorer program, the agency's oldest continuous program, designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the heliophysics and astrophysics programs in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
###
The ICON web site is http://icon.ssl.berkeley.edu/.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Intel’s fiscal Q1 earnings are out today, and the company reported profit and earnings at expectations on revenue with $12.6 billion for the quarter, and below on earnings per share at $0.40, according to Bloomberg’s analyst consensus.?Revenue was down from Q1 2012, as were earnings per share, as the chip-making giant continues to weather the storm of a declining PC market. PC sales for the beginning of the year were reportedly steep, according to research firm IDC, with Windows 8 taking blame for the decline. IDC found that overall, sales were down 13.9 percent for PCs, a category which excludes tablets and notebooks with removable keyboards. Even if you count those in, the news still wouldn’t be great for Intel, which continues to struggle with making any real headway in the mobile processor market.?The PC group’s revenue alone totaled only $8 billion, down nearly 6 percent year over year. Intel said in a statement from the CFO’s office that the sequential decline in overall revenue of 7 percent was in line with what they’d expect to see coming out of a holiday season. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is leaving the company after eight years leading the company in May. Otellini announced that he’d be leaving Intel late last year, giving the company ample time to plan for and put in place succession arrangements. Otellini has been vocal about Intel’s work on “reinventing?the PC” as it continues to face challenging market conditions and try to overcome them. This definitely wasn’t a great quarter for Intel, and that means the incoming CEO will have a lot of expectations to live up, in a very challenging market environment. Intel’s roadmap includes big plans for mobile, like the Bay Trail 22nm design with native quad core processing built in, slated to arrive by the end of this year. It’s going to power budget, convertible PC designs, Intel says, which might inject some fresh life in the sluggish PC market, though we’ve yet to see any real promising indication that Microsoft’s efforts along those lines with the Surface RT are paying any big dividends ? in fact, quite the opposite. Intel spent over $10 billion on research and development in 2012, up $2 billion from the previous year, as Intel said it was investing heavily in mobile, tablets, ultrabooks and server technologies. The company is clearly spending big to try to make sure it can
Roy Crane?s Captain Easy: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics)
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Intel’s fiscal Q1 earnings are out today, and the company reported profit and earnings at expectations on revenue with $12.6 billion for the quarter, and below on earnings per share at $0.40, according to Bloomberg’s analyst consensus.?Revenue was down from Q1 2012, as were earnings per share, as the chip-making giant continues to weather the storm of a declining PC market. PC sales for the beginning of the year were reportedly steep, according to research firm IDC, with Windows 8 taking blame for the decline. IDC found that overall, sales were down 13.9 percent for PCs, a category which excludes tablets and notebooks with removable keyboards. Even if you count those in, the news still wouldn’t be great for Intel, which continues to struggle with making any real headway in the mobile processor market.?The PC group’s revenue alone totaled only $8 billion, down nearly 6 percent year over year. Intel said in a statement from the CFO’s office that the sequential decline in overall revenue of 7 percent was in line with what they’d expect to see coming out of a holiday season. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is leaving the company after eight years leading the company in May. Otellini announced that he’d be leaving Intel late last year, giving the company ample time to plan for and put in place succession arrangements. Otellini has been vocal about Intel’s work on “reinventing?the PC” as it continues to face challenging market conditions and try to overcome them. This definitely wasn’t a great quarter for Intel, and that means the incoming CEO will have a lot of expectations to live up, in a very challenging market environment. Intel’s roadmap includes big plans for mobile, like the Bay Trail 22nm design with native quad core processing built in, slated to arrive by the end of this year. It’s going to power budget, convertible PC designs, Intel says, which might inject some fresh life in the sluggish PC market, though we’ve yet to see any real promising indication that Microsoft’s efforts along those lines with the Surface RT are paying any big dividends ? in fact, quite the opposite. Intel spent over $10 billion on research and development in 2012, up $2 billion from the previous year, as Intel said it was investing heavily in mobile, tablets, ultrabooks and server technologies. The company is clearly spending big to try to make sure it can