It's Friday! Friday! But the music video of Rebecca Black's song which celebrates the day is nowhere to be found.
According to Reuters, a legal battle between Black and Ark Music Records, whose studio was used to record the song, has led to Black's lawyers yanking the video from YouTube, claiming that it violates copyright laws.
Ark Music was paid $4,000 by Black's mother in exchange for the song and music video. So Ark is actually more like a recording studio for hire than a standard record label. However, Black was never given the master recordings that her contract allegedly guaranteed to her. Furthermore, Ark does not possess the right to commercially exploit the song in other forms, such as ringtones.
The legal battle is being fought in order to determine which parts of the royalties from the song should be given to Black and which parts should be given to Ark Music.
"We can confirm that we submitted a take down notice to YouTube as a result of the dispute we have with Ark Music regarding the 'Friday' video," Black's representative said, according to Digital Spy.
The video had more than 167 million views before it was taken down.
"YouTube takes copyright infringement very seriously. When we receive a complaint alleging that a video infringes another person or company's copyrights, we remove that video," a YouTube spokesperson said yesterday.
If Black and Ark do not reach an agreement, the matter will have to be settled in court
United Airlines passengers across the country faced long delays Friday night because of a computer glitch affecting departures, officials said.
The airline experienced a computer outage that interrupted airport processing and reservation systems, according to United. The outage was first reported about 5:15 p.m. Pacific Time.
"Our technology team is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," according to a statement issued by the airline. "We apologize for the disruption being caused to travelers at affected airports and we are seeking to resume operations as quickly as possible."
A spokesman for Los Angeles International Airport referred all inquiries to United and declined to answer questions about the extent of delays there.
Airports in San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. were among those with departure delays.
The Ceglia v. Facebook lawsuit seems to keep getting stranger. Paul Ceglia, the upstate New York wood pellet salesman who says he was promised half of Mark Zuckerberg’s share of Facebook back in 2004, filed new papers in court today insisting he’s not the fraudster that Facebook maintains he is.
Two weeks ago, Facebook filed a pile of evidence that it had gathered from experts and private investigators, detailing Ceglia’s past, which includes a conviction for drug possession and several accusations of fraud. Facebook also analyzed Mark Zuckerberg’s old Harvard email account, and couldn’t find any of the emails that Ceglia presented in his lawsuit—emails that Facebook says are fakes.
In papers filed today, Ceglia insists the emails are real, as is the contract that says he owns a chunk of Facebook, which Zuckerberg’s legal team has called a “cut-and-paste job.” The new documents also note that Ceglia has taken a polygraph test that found he’s telling the truth. However, Ceglia’s new filing doesn’t respond to many of Facebook’s accusations, such as the claims that Ceglia engaged in a land fraud scheme.
The immediate issue is over “discovery,” the part of litigation where the two sides exchange evidence. Facebook wants an expedited discovery schedule because it hopes to quickly prove that Ceglia is a fraud. For his part, Ceglia has agreed to speed up discovery but insists that the sped-up schedule be “mutual,” with Facebook disclosing documents and evidence at the same time that he does.
Here’s highlights of the documents Ceglia filed today:
» Ceglia insists the emails are real, but here’s the thing: they were originally web emails, that he has cut-and-pasted into three Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Word files. In a sworn declaration, Ceglia says that’s his standard practice for saving business-related emails. Those Word files are now in the hands of forensic experts who have filed declarations saying that the metadata indicates the dates of the Word files are in 2003 and 2004, the time period Ceglia says they came from.
» Ceglia’s lawyers accuse Zuckerberg or his agent have deleted emails from his Harvard email account. (That doesn’t seem particularly unusual—it’s amazing that so many emails are still around, more than seven years after the fact—and none of Ceglia’s could be found.)
» Ceglia underwent a polygraph test to indicate that he was telling the truth. In his declaration, he “respectfully suggest[s] that Mark Zuckerberg undergo the same polygraph I have in order to expose who is really telling the truth.”
» In his declaration, Ceglia also says that the tactics of Zuckerberg and Facebook have taken “a terrible toll on me, my wife, our two sons, and even our parents.” He continues:
I have been repeatedly called a liar in the press and in the papers filed by Defendants in this action. I have been accused by Mark Zuckerberg’s counsel… of committing fraud. I have been the subject of ridiculue. I have been followed and understand that declarations have been submitted by private investigators that contain inaccurate information.
» As to the drug conviction and the fraud accusations in Facebook’s evidence, Ceglia avoids the subject almost entirely. There’s one line in his declaration that says simply: “While I have made some mistakes in my life, I accept responsibility for those actions.”
» That contract that Facebook says is a “cut-and-paste” job? Ceglia’s lawyers hired their own experts who say the document looks real. For example, indentations in the second page indicate it was underneath the first one when it was signed, indicating Ceglia didn’t just add the first page later. They say that further analysis is needed to date the ink, though.
» A digital forensics company has taken charge of a bunch of Ceglia’s possessions, including 169 floppy disks, 1075 CDs, a laptop computer, and a second hard drive.
Ceglia’s lawyers said in a joint statement today: “Not only does Mr. Ceglia possess an original agreement, it has been examined by two forensic document experts, who through non-destructive techniques have found nothing to question the document’s authenticity… Mr. Ceglia’s response is supported by affidavits from four experts. Certain of those concern the emails quoted in his first amended complaint, and state that the metadata from the documents in which the emails were saved shows that the documents were saved in 2003 and 2004, contemporaneous with the dates of the emails.”
Facebook’s outside lawyer on this case, Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, said in a statement: “Ceglia’s lawsuit is a shell game, shifting and changing with every filing. This latest court filing admits that the bogus emails are, literally, a cut-and-paste job, just like the so-called contract is a fraud. There is a deafening silence in these papers: Ceglia does not dispute that he has a track record of forging documents to rip people off. And the fact that this plaintiff now has to rely on a polygraph test says it all. Everyone knows polygraph tests are easily manipulated, which is why courts routinely disregard them.”
It’s easy to forget about summer skin care when you’re enjoying yourself outside. While spending time at the beach or poolside, on the biking or hiking trails, or playing pretty much any outdoor sport, regularly applying sunscreen is probably the last thing on your mind. However, summer skin care is something you should definitely pay close attention to.
It’s no secret that the sun has UVA and UVB rays that are extremely damaging to your skin, which makes it hard to believe that so many people ignore the damage that the sun can cause to their bodies. Sun damage causes aging and, of course, various types of cancer. Taking appropriate summer skin care precautions is the only way to go.
Sunscreen only works if you use it properly. Follow these summer skin care guidelines to protect your flesh and your health:
Be sure to put sun block on 30 minutes before heading outdoors.
Apply sunscreen every two hours, regardless of the SPF level. Over time, sunscreen wears off by being touched, rubbed off with towels or by sweating.
Use protection on all parts of your body. Don’t forget your ears, head, hands, and feet. Use a lip balm with sun protection to guard your lips.
Remember that cotton clothes often protect less than an SPF 15 sunscreen. Even if you have a T-shirt on, you should use sunscreen.
Know that waterproof sun block may not be as waterproof as you think; after swimming or sweating, apply more.
Use the right amount of sun block. Every two hours, you should apply about an ounce. If you don’t use enough, you may as well not use any at all. Apply a little extra to vulnerable areas, such as the face.
Check the best-before date. Sunscreen expires and loses its effectiveness over time. Leaving your sunscreen in the heat will also jeopardize its strength.
Use a higher SPF if you are also using bug spray as some repellents can reduce the effectiveness of your sunscreen.
Only use baby-formula sunscreen on
Saudi Arabian women plan to start driving their cars Friday, one month after Manal al-Sherif — a key figure in a social media campaign against a ban on female drivers — was arrested when she posted a YouTube video of herself driving around the city of Khobar.
The mass driving campaign is the result of an online movement that began around two months ago, when Saudi women’s rights activists called for the country’s women to start driving their own cars on June 17. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prevents women from driving. Though there is no written law on the matter, religious rulings are enforced by the police, which has the same effect as a ban. Women are forced to rely on live-in drivers or male relatives for transportation.
Activists pushed the movement via Facebook, Twitter and other online outlets before some of those accounts were shut down. And al-Sherif was arrested and jailed after her YouTube video (pictured above) hit the web. Al-Sherif was eventually released from a women’s prison after nine days, pledging she would no longer drive nor take part in the Women2Drive initiative.
But online support for the campaign has lived on through copies of earlier Facebook groups. And people in other parts of the world have also taken up the cause. The Honk for Saudi Women viral campaign is one example, featuring videos of women and men from around the world, honking their horns in support of Saudi women who will drive on June 17. The campaign also has a petition on online activism platform Change.org, asking Oprah to make a similar video in a show of support.
Other petitions on Change.org call on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Catherine Ashton — the European Union’s representative for foreign affairs and security policy — to publicly support Saudi women’s right to drive.
This isn’t the first time Saudi women have tried to organize such a campaign. The initiative has been in the works since November 1990, when 47 women drove around Riyadh before getting caught and arrested. Eman Al Nafjan, a female blogger and post graduate student in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, says the women were suspended from their jobs and faced widespread condemnation from mosque pulpits. Fliers were distributed with contact information for the women, and citizens were encouraged to call up and condemn them.
Al Nafjan says the backlash caused the campaign to quiet down for a while, but this year’s Arab Spring probably inspired women to speak up again — not just to be allowed to drive, but for other rights as well.
Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is a R&D center in Taiwan that’s innovating for the sake of innovation but with the hopes that something they create will drive Taiwan’s technology ecosystem forward. Their booth at Display Taiwan 2011 was jam packed with cool demo’s but this one in particular we felt has far reaching cost saving implications. Imagine the ability to turn any existing TV into a touch screen device with a physical piece of hardware that you can mount to your TV. The device can be built into TVs or mount on afterwards, what’s so exciting is that it makes huge touch screens affordable. If a 52″ touch screen is going fro $2500 a touch screen would cost you $6000, they weren’t able to provide a price for the unit, but did say that it would only make a touch screen TV slightly more expensive.
[netbooknews]
On Thursday (June 16), that dress will join the "Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power'' exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where it will sit on display along with Gaga's childhood piano and Armani Prive orbit gown, which she wore to the 2011 Grammys, until February 2012.
"I was talking to Lady Gaga's managers, and this is probably around November [of last year], and basically talked about different things, and we talked about the meat dress and we thought it would be great to add it to the exhibit just because of all the notoriety it has, so that's basically how it came about," RRHOF chief curator Jim Henke told MTV News. "We thought the meat dress would really be cool."
So, how will the folks at the Rock Hall keep it fresh until it wraps up its stint there? "It's going to be in a case and we are putting some canisters in there to control the humidity, and then we have this other canister that soaks up the glutens," he explained. "But it's in a sealed case and we have the gels to control the environment in there."
However, it took some work to get it to the point where it can hang around the Rock Hall along with a number of other high-profile memorabilia without seeming super-gross. Henke explained, "We went back to Franc Fernandez ... ultimately what we decided to do, we sent it to a taxidermist, they put it into a meat locker and then we started working on it and created this [chemical] solution and treated it with that.
"And then they had a body form, and when it was still wet, they put it on the body form and then it dried on there," he continued. "And then they had to do a little bit of painting to bring it back and give it a little bit more color."
Gaga hasn't been shy about making the dress into jerky or wanting to have her extensive wardrobe in a museum, as she shared on "The Graham Norton Show." "I keep everything and dream of having a museum of all my clothes. I have an archive house for all my clothes," she said. "[The dress has] been jerked. It stank. It was fabulous. I never want to talk to anyone at those big celebrity functions because I feel awkward, and it was great — because it stunk, I didn't have to talk to anyone."
Having the dress in the exhibit is quite an honor and it's an interesting piece, but Henke notes this isn't the most bizarre exhibit at the RRHOF. "Definitely one of the stranger pieces," he laughed about the dress, adding, "There are some other weird things. We actually have [pioneering radio DJ] Alan Freed's ashes."
The trailer opens with a distraught Lily Potter (Harry's mom) speaking to her infant son. "Harry, be safe," she says in a strained whisper. "Be strong." Cut to the words "Every moment he's lived has led to this," before an eerie voice-over by evil Dark Lord Voldemort comes in over flashback scenes of key moments in several of the previous seven films.
"Harry Potter, you have fought valiantly," Voldemort sneers. "Now join me, and confront your fate."
From here on out, much like the action in the second half of J.K. Rowling's seventh Potter book, things get very intense. There are flashes of Voldemort in several states of mind and presence, all of them ferocious and teeming with dark force.
"You've kept him alive so he can die at the proper moment," Snape says to him at one point.
Cut to Harry, Ron and Hermione riding a dragon, continuing their dangerous quest for the final horcruxes that will help bring an end to the Dark Lord.
This is followed by the beginning shots, or so it seems, of the epic battle royale at Hogwarts. Death eaters are surrounding the school, and Professor McGonagall orders the magical protectors of the school to come to life and protect them. What looks like the Dark Lord's army is shown assembled outside the gates, ready to attack, while our favorite Potter protagonists are shown waiting anxiously inside the school.
Suddenly the final battle is in full swing, wands slinging, wizards clashing, all of which can be very briefly summarized by these words: death and destruction.
In the midst of all the madness, there are emotional moments that seem to show favorite characters preparing to meet certain death. One poignant moment occurs in a brief exchange between Harry and Snape, a character who has always mysteriously walked the line between good and evil.
"Tell them how it happened that night," Harry says angrily to Snape, before a flashback of Dumbledore's death appears onscreen. "How you looked him in the eye, a man who trusted you, and killed him!"
There is also a brief moment where Harry is surrounded by the ghostly presences of his loved ones, people like his mother and godfather Sirius Black.
"You'll stay with me?" Harry asks his illusory supporters.
"Always," answers his mother.
"Until the end," Black adds.
The remaining seconds are all about action, action, action — specifically, the fight between Harry and Voldemort.
"Come on, Tom, let's finish this the way we started," Harry says to Voldemort as they stand on the precipice of a cliff. "Together!"
This is followed by more quick cuts of wand-wielding and explosions. And then Voldemort and Harry are shown battling once more, this time crawling toward one wand.
"Only I can live forever," Voldemort says with finality.
In a study that followed older French adults for five years, researchers found that those who regularly used olive oil were 41 percent less likely to have a stroke than those who never used the oil.
The findings, reported in the journal Neurology, hint that the well-known connection between olive oil and heart disease might extend to stroke as well. Olive oil is a key ingredient in the so-called Mediterranean diet. And some clinical trials have suggested that the diet helps control risk factors for heart disease, like high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and elevated levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol.
High olive oil intake is also linked to a lower risk of heart attack, and a longer lifespan among heart attack survivors. These latest findings support the general advice that people replace dubious dietary fats -- namely, saturated fats and "trans" fats -- with olive oil and other unsaturated fats, according to an expert not involved in the study. But he also stressed that the study does not prove that olive oil, per se, helps prevent strokes.
"We need to remember that this is an observational study," said Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York who wrote an editorial published with the study.
The study found a correlation between people's olive oil use and their stroke risk, he told Reuters Health -- but that doesn't necessarily translate into cause-and-effect.
"People who use a lot of olive oil may be very different from people who don't," Scarmeas said.
Olive oil users may, for example, have higher incomes, eat better overall or exercise more often than people who never use the oil. The researchers on the new study, led by Cécilia Samieri of the French national research institute INSERM, tried to account for those differences. And after they did, olive oil was still linked to a lower stroke risk.
But it's impossible to fully account for all those variables, Scarmeas noted. What's needed, he said, are clinical trials where people are randomly assigned to use olive oil or not, then followed over time to see who suffers a stroke. Such clinical trials are considered the "gold standard" of medical evidence.
The current study included 7,625 French adults age 65 and older who reported on their diets and other lifestyle factors. People who said they used olive oil for both cooking and as a dressing were considered "intensive users."
Over the next five to six years, those intensive users suffered strokes at a rate of 0.3 percent per year. That compared with just over 0.5 percent among non-users, and 0.4 percent among moderate users.
When the researchers factored in other diet habits, exercise levels and major risk factors for stroke -- like high blood pressure and diabetes -- heavy olive oil use was tied to 41 percent reduction in the odds of stroke.
Samieri's team also took blood samples from another 1,245 older adults, measuring their levels of oleic acid -- a monounsaturated fat that accounts for most of the fatty acids in olive oil. The one-third of participants with the highest oleic acid levels were 73 percent less likely to suffer a stroke than the one-third with the lowest levels.
The findings, according to Scarmeas, argue for more research into olive oil's potential benefits against not only heart disease, but stroke and other neurological diseases as well.
For now, he suggested that people choose olive oil and other unsaturated fats over saturated fats (found largely in meat and dairy) and trans fats (found in some processed foods, like crackers, cookies and chips).
"It's better to rely on this type of fat for your overall health," Scarmeas said.
That said, no single food is consumed in isolation, he points out in his editorial. Olive oil is one part of the Mediterranean diet that has been tied to heart benefits. The diet also boasts plenty of fruits and vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish and moderate amounts of red wine.
PRINCE WILLIAM and Kate Middleton have “put on hold” plans to recruit servants – after no one wanted the jobs because the salaries being offered were too low.
The couple will move into Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace by the end of June.
And as the Mirror reported last week, adverts went up at Buckingham Palace for staff to help them. Among the jobs was a dresser for Kate.
But we can reveal at least two people who applied turned it down when they found out the salary was £20k a year – without accommodation.
The couple’s Private Secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, said yesterday: “We are going to look at their lifestyle over the next two years before we decide who they need to help them.”
New technology is being developed at OSU to capture and use the low-to-medium grade waste heat that's now going out the exhaust pipe of millions of automobiles, diesel generators, or being wasted by factories and electrical utilities.
The potential cost savings, improved energy efficiency and broad application of such technology is enormous, experts say. The new systems now being perfected at OSU should be able to use much of that waste heat either in cooling or the production of electricity.
A prototype device has been finished to demonstrate the efficacy of this technology, and the findings just published in Applied Thermal Engineering, a professional journal.
"This could become a very important new energy source and way to improve energy efficiency," said Hailei Wang, a research associate in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at OSU. "The prototype shows that these systems work as well as we expected they would."
More than half of the heat generated by industrial activities is now wasted, Wang said, and even very advanced electrical power plants only convert about 40 percent of the energy produced into electricity. The internal combustion engines of automobiles are even worse -- they generally operate around 25-40 percent conversion efficiency. The very function of an automobile radiator is to dissipate wasted heat.
Various approaches have been attempted, and are sometimes used, to capture and use at least some of that waste heat to produce cooling. The new system being developed at OSU may do that as, or more efficiently than past approaches, be more portable, and also have one major advantage -- the ability to also produce electricity.
It's called a "thermally activated cooling system" that gains much of its efficiency by using extraordinarily small microchannels which help to better meet the performance, size and weight challenges. It effectively combines a vapor compression cycle with an "organic Rankine cycle," an existing energy conversion technology.
The new prototype completed at OSU succeeded in turning 80 percent of every kilowatt of waste heat into a kilowatt of cooling capability. Researchers say the conversion efficiency wouldn't be nearly as high if the goal is to produce electricity -- about 15-20 percent -- but it's still much better than the current approach, which is to waste the energy potential of all of the heat.
"This technology would be especially useful if there's a need to have cooling systems where heat is being wasted," Wang said. "That's one reason the research has been supported by the Department of Defense, because they see it being used to provide needed air conditioning for electronics and other purposes when they are using generators in the field."
However, the OSU scientists said that may be just the beginning. Factories often produce enormous amounts of wasted heat in their operations. The systems could also be incorporated into alternative energy technologies such as solar or geothermal, scientists say, in addition to fossil fuel use.
Conceptually, it should also be possible for such systems to be used in hybrid automotive technology, taking waste heat from the gasoline engine and using it not only for air conditioning but also to help recharge the battery that powers the vehicle, Wang said.
Continued research will be needed to perfect the technology and adapt it to different uses, the scientists said.
The work takes advantage of OSU's advanced programs in microchannel technology, a key focus of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute operated by OSU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This study was co-authored by Rich Peterson, an OSU professor of mechanical engineering, expert in thermal sciences and energy systems, and associate director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute.
Natalie Portman gave birth to a baby boy, a source confirms to Us Weekly. It's the first child for the actress, 30, and fiance Benjamin Millepied.
Portman and French-born ballet star Millepied, 33, met and fell in love on the set of Black Swan, in which he served as choreographer and co-star.
"It was seductive to watch them," a set source told Us of the stunning pair. "There was no way the attraction could be missed. I don't think he could help himself -- she's dazzling!"
To the surprise of fans everywhere, Portman announced her pregnancy and engagement in late December of last year -- and showed off her engagement ring and growing baby bump throughout the 2011 awards show season.
And, as Oscar buzz heated up over her intense performance as tormented, obsessed ballerina Nina in Black Swan, the often-private star (whose ex beaus include folk singer Devendra Banhart, SNL's Andy Samberg and Spanish actor Gael Garcia Bernal) opened up about her impending motherhood -- and her hubby-to-be.
After that triumphant night, the happy couple retreated to the Napa Valley for a romantic "babymoon" in California wine country. "They were really low-key," a witness told Us.
Portman's impending motherhood also inspired her to break from her famously strict vegan diet. "I actually went back to being vegetarian when I became pregnant, just because I felt like I wanted that stuff," she said during an April radio interview. "I was listening to my body to have eggs and dairy and that sort of stuff."
When the fairer sex in a marriage doesn’t get her much needed beauty rest, it can lead to negative effects on marital bliss. According to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, when wives are unable to fall asleep at night, marital interactions of both partners are impacted the following day, while sleep issues of husbands have little bearing on marital woes. The new research was recently presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis.
Lead researcher Wendy Troxel, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University’s School of Medicine noted, “The findings suggest a wife’s prolonged inability to sleep predicts her own and her husband's marital interactions, which tend to be more negative and less positive.”
For their analysis the researchers monitored the sleep patterns of 35 married couples with noninvasive sensors for a total of ten nights. The healthy couples had an average age of 32, and were mainly white professionals. The participants kept electronic diaries to track whether daily marital interactions were negative or positive, notating marital communications such as being criticized or ignored, as well as whether they received support and were cared for.
Findings revealed that significantly more negative interactions were initiated the following day by wives who experienced sleep disturbances the night before, but when husbands experienced sleep difficulties, little difference was noted in the next day’s marital relations.
Regarding the results, Troxel explained, “Women are generally more expressive and tend to drive the emotional climate of a couple’s relationship.”
She noted that wives who are unable to sleep are more likely to be irritable, convey stress, and verbalize feelings. Troxel then added, “Men are more likely to repress their feelings or not be as aware or tuned into the climate of change taking place.”
Troxel further explained that the sleeping difficulties of wife can be the result of a stressful cycle because marital issues may lead to insomnia and other sleep disturbances that in turn lead to negative marital interaction. She pointed out, “It’s a cyclical process that can get under the skin of couples and put them into negative trajectories when it comes to their mental health and well-being.” She also cautioned, “Sleep problems need to be clinically addressed and perhaps marriage therapy started if the relationship is in trouble.”
Prior research in which Troxel has been involved has shown that women who experienced the stable presence of a husband or partner enjoyed better sleep quality, and that wives in happy marriages experienced fewer sleep difficulties.
In general, the results of the latest study strongly indicate that the sleep quality of the wife is associated with the tone of the following day’s marital interaction, instead of vice versa. Troxel said, “Intuitively, it makes sense that you don't function at your best when you're sleep-deprived, but there’s shockingly little data on how this affects marital relationships.”
What to Do About Sleeplessness
There are a number of reasons why you may not be sleeping well, but the end result can effect hormone levels, the appearance of skin and hair, depression, heart health and cholesterol levels, and even our weight. Chronic sleep deficit causes detrimental effects on one’s ability to remain alert and attentive, and leads to cumulative effects on performance that could become a safety risk.
In today’s busy society, electronic overload and overstimulation are common causes for sleepless nights, as are stress and the consumption of alcohol. There are ways to improve your sleep performance, without resorting to prescription medication or a sleep study.
Turn down the light/block out the night: When getting ready for bed, opt for a small table light or dimmed overhead lighting, rather than full-strength light. Make sure that light is blocked from the outside, through the use of shades, curtains or blinds. Remove any offending light sources, from a cable box, DVR, blinking computer, answering machine or cordless or mobile phone. And try to eliminate outside noises by using earplugs or a white noise machine on low. (There’s even an app for that!)
Outfit the bed/cradle the head: Mattresses, sheets, blankets and pillows all can contribute to sleep issues. Make sure you bed is in good shape and flipped regularly. Splurge on comfortable soft sheets (100 percent Egyptian cotton are good for both comfort and breathability). Find a blanket and comfortable that help maintain a comfortable temperature and won’t require that you make multiple adjustments throughout the night. And finally, find a pillow that is not to small, not too hard, and just right for your head and neck.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said Wednesday that he cannot confirm or deny a report by The New York Times that the nation's spy agency detained five informants who helped the CIA before the raid that left Osama bin Laden dead.
The official said the agency is actively searching for information about bin Laden's stay in Pakistan and his support network.
"We want to know how he could stay in that area and what kind of support network he had," the official told CNN.
The official asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
"We want to know everything," the official said when asked whether the spy agency was looking for informants who helped the CIA.
The New York Times report Tuesday, which was attributed to U.S. officials, said the five informants who worked for the CIA copied license plates of cars visiting bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before the May raid.
The detention of the informants could be seen as more evidence of the tenuous relationship between Pakistan and the U.S., The New York Times said.
Syed Azmat Ali, a military spokesman, told CNN he could not directly comment on the report, but said arrests have occurred after the bin Laden killing.
"There were a number of people arrested in Abbottabad after the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound," Ali said. "So this is not a new piece of information."
Ali said those arrested were "picked up from the compound where bin Laden was found and a house in Abbottabad that was used to monitor the bin Laden compound activities."
Those arrested "could have been Pakistanis who were informants to the CIA," he said.
Google and rooftop solar power company SolarCity announced a $280 million investment deal Tuesday, the largest such deal for home-based solar power systems in the United States.
The investment will give San Mateo, Calif-based SolarCity the funding to build and lease solar power systems to a 7,000 to 9,000 homeowners in the 10 states where it operates.
As SolarCity's financing partner, Google plans to recoup its investment over time through those lease payments.
Funding arrangements like this are not uncommon in the energy businesses, but they have previously been restricted mostly to utilities and a handful of banks with specialized industry knowledge.
Google's entry into this type of financing is both a sign that more companies may be interested in funding alternative energy ventures and a nod to the fast-growing market in leasing residential solar panels.
"Google is out in front on this," said Nathaniel Bullard, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It's a sign of confidence in the space."
Google likes to experiment with clean energy investments -- witness last year's wind farm investment -- but the SolarCity deal marks its first move into the residential market. SolarCity is one of a handful of companies that lease solar panels to homeowners.
The idea behind leasing is to keep things as simple and cheap for the customer as possible.
In SolarCity's case, the customer signs a multi-year agreement with the company and begins writing a monthly check to the firm that's ideally 10% to 20% percent lower than what they were previously paying for their monthly power bill.
SolarCity then handles the rest -- everything from purchasing and installing the panels to claiming the various tax credits offered by the federal, state, and sometimes even local governments.
If companies were valued by hype, then Facebook could certainly claim to be worth $100bn. But is it really worth that in cold, hard cash?
A report from CNBC overnight claims the site is preparing for an initial public offering early next year at an eye-watering valuation of at least $100bn.
A 2012 IPO has been expected for some time. CNBC said the company would be obliged to go public in the first quarter of the year because it is likely to reach the 500-shareholder limit in October, and would then be required to release financial results to the US Securities and Exchange Commission every quarter. The first of these would be due in April, prompting speculation of a first quarter IPO just ahead of that.
Further pressure may be coming from within, with some employees pushing for an IPO so that restrictions on cashing in on their stock will be lifted.
We asked Facebook about the report and they declined to comment. But this follows various remarks from chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg last month when asked about Facebook's IPO. In late May at the Reuters Global Technology Summit, Sandberg described the Facebook IPO as "a process that all companies go through. It's an inevitable process for us, the next thing that happens. No one is buying us, we're going public."
At the POLIS lecture, the Wall Street Journal's Ben Rooney described her answer as non-committal, but she referred to "the IPO" rather than "an IPO", which was seen as further confirmation. And though she joked she'd give out the date, she didn't.
Over the past six months, estimates of Facebook's value have rocketed from $50bn when Goldman Sachs invested $1.5bn in the firm, to $85bn based on trading through private markets such as SecondMarket.
One transaction in January, where a trader bought Facebook shares at $55 each, put the site's value at $124bn – that's 62 times greater than Facebook's estimated revenues of $2bn last year.
If more concrete evidence emerges of a slowdown in Facebook's growth that would confirm the company is peaking, it makes sense for the company to cash in soon. And it's definitely in the air, with LinkedIn's IPO at $4.3bn and Groupon recently filing for its IPO at a valuation of $750m.
From basic word search to now Human Language Understanding, IBM has traversed this journey starting with Mechanized Encoding and Searching of Literary Information (1957) to the ultimate performance of Human Language Understanding in the game show Jeopardy by the computer system named Watson (2011).
No - IBM is not going on the game show circuit, but IBM will make Watson's full human language understanding deep question and answer system (DeepQA) available to healthcare in the near future for many use cases benefitting providers and payers. So what about now?
With IBM Content Analytics and its healthcare-specific solution called Medical Records Text Analytics, the Natural Language Processing technologies used in Watson are available to unleash the content traditionally locked in doctor's notes, clinical records, journal articles, desk references, drug uses / interactions, and many other medical content sources.
By unleashing this information, biomedical informatics organization can leverage the information to enhance disease management research, improve clinical treatment effectiveness and automate performance and quality reporting and other uses today while taking advantage of Watson for Healthcare DeepQA when available in the near future.
City leaders agree to allow DTE to install two charging stations in parking lots downtown.
If you need to charge your Chevy Volt, your options in Rochester may soon be expanding.
City leaders approved on Monday night an agreement with DTE Energy that would put two electric vehicle supply equipment charging stations in downtown parking lots.
It's part of a Department of Energy grant the Detroit energy company received; according to Rochester City Manager Jaymes Vettraino, DTE was looking for "forward-edge communities" with downtowns to install two of the charging stations.
They chose Rochester.
"This would be, for the city, an opportunity to experiment with this type of technology," Vettraino said.
There are already two similar charging stations at the Royal Park Hotel.
The grant would cover the $25,000 installation of the charging stations; still unknown is which parking lots the charging stations would be located in.
Also unknown is how users would pay for the charging stations. According to the agreement between DTE and the city, users for these particular stations cannot be charged by kilowatt per hour, but they could be charged a flat fee or hourly rate for the use.
In suburban Ann Arbor, the Saline City Council agreed in January to allow DTE to install one of the charging stations in a city parking lot; still last week, leaders were debating whether to charge users, according to a story on Saline-Milan Patch.
According to the story, it would cost 71 cents an hour in energy costs; a credit card swipe machine would cost about $500, in addition to about $200 in yearly transaction fees. A group of anonymous donors had offered to cover the electricity costs for two years, though city council did not accept that request.
In Rochester, city officials plan to meet Wednesday with DTE representatives to discuss the user fees and placement of the charging stations.
"Aside from the cool factor, this is great," said councilmember Ben Giovanelli. "It appears we're being cutting-edge."
Selena Gomez was back onstage and appeared to be in much better health on Monday (June 13). The Disney star spent the weekend recovering after being hospitalized last Thursday in Los Angeles for a combination of food poisoning and exhaustion.
The 18-year-old singer/actress took the stage for a performance at the Santa Monica Place mall Monday afternoon, wearing a flowing, white blouse over a white tank top, black shorts, and black strappy heels. Gomez and her band, the Scene, played two of her hit songs, "Who Says" and "A Year Without Rain," to cheers from the crowd. Gomez thanked her fans profusely for coming out to see her and for their support, especially in the last few days. She also apologized for missing her original appearance, which had been scheduled for this past Friday.
"I want to thank you so much for coming. If you guys came on Friday, I'm so sorry that I couldn't be here," she said before the band struck up the first few notes of "Who Says." "I love you guys very much."
Although Gomez didn't do any crazy dance moves or flips, she performed each song with plenty of energy. Her voice sounded strong and steady. At the end of the second song, the teen star answered a few questions from fans in the audience, mostly pegged to her experience filming the upcoming movie "Monte Carlo," around which the event was organized.
Gomez did take a brief moment to assure her fans (and the throng of reporters also gathered) that she's feeling just fine. "I'm feeling much better, thank you," she said.
During a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Bill Gates revealed some startling information about Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
While explaining that Zuck--like Gates--has pledged to donate most of his fortune, Gates mentioned offhandedly that Zuck may be engaged to girlfriend Priscilla Chan.
"I didn't say to Mark, 'Give me all your money!' He was predisposed to do it and he came to me seeking advice," Gates began.
He continued thus:
His fiancée Priscilla thought about education and he gave money to Newark, New Jersey, and we did a co-grant so that some of our people who had some expertise in that field could help him out. He deserves credit. I started meaningful philanthropy in my forties. He's starting way earlier.
In May, Zuckerberg and Chan, who have been together since their college days, moved into a $7 million Palo Alto home, which sits on 5,000 square feet of property. Earlier this year, the couple also adopted a puppy named Beast.
On his Facebook profile, Zuckerberg's relationship status currently reads "in a relationship," rather than "engaged." The same goes for the relationship status listed on Chan's Facebook profile.
Did Gates simply misspeak, or did he spill a big secret?
[huffingtonpost]
A pair of earthquakes with magnitudes of at least 5.0 struck within 90 minutes of each other near Christchurch, New Zealand, on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, reviving vivid memories of a deadly quake that killed more than 180 people in February.
"Everyone is on edge here anyway," said Rhys Taylor, who said he could hear sirens and see helicopters flying over Christchurch. "Obviously, power's out -- sort of all over the city at the moment -- and phone lines are down."
Police evacuated sections of the city's central business district after reports of a possible gas leak, police said. Several bridges in the city were closed as a precaution.
"It was quite an exciting ride," Christchurch Police Acting Inspector Murray Hurst told CNN after the first quake, adding that there was some damage caused by the quake and a few injuries that were not life-threatening.
The first quake -- a magnitude 5.2 -- was centered 9 kilometers (5 miles) east-southeast of Christchurch at a depth of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles), according to USGS. The quake took place at 1 p.m. Monday.
A second quake -- a more powerful 6.0 tremor -- struck at 2:20 p.m., roughly 13 kilometers (8 miles) north-northeast of the city at a depth of 9 kilometers (5.6 miles).
And at least one smaller quake followed. A magnitude 4.6 quake struck at 2:40 p.m. about 11 kilometers (6 miles) east of Christchurch and at a depth of 12.5 kilometers (7.8 miles), according to the USGS.
The quakes came nearly four months after a 6.3-magnitude temblor struck the same area, killing scores of people.
[cnn]
One of the many storylines in the NBA Finals won by the Dallas Mavericks Sunday night was Terry's bold tattoo. Terry said he had the Larry O'Brien championship trophy tattooed on his right bicep before the season began because he was confident the Mavs would clinch the title.
Losing would've been painful for Terry, literally, as he said he would have the tattoo removed.
The 105-95 victory was sweet for many Mavericks, especially Terry, who led the team in scoring with 27 points.
"When you did something as crazy as I did, you have to back it up," Terry said, showing his tattoo to the television cameras. "This team never gave up when faced with adversity. We never gave up. Tonight we got vindication."
The Mavs used furious scoring barrages by Terry and weathered an uneven game by star forward Dirk Nowitzki to win the game.
"I still really can't believe it. The team worked so long and so hard. The team deserves this. The Mavs nation deserves this," Nowitzki said. "I could not get in a rhythm today but the team carried me to this win."
Despite a poor shooting night Nowitzki still had 21 points.
The Mavs held a slim 53-51 lead at halftime and was able to grow the lead. They led by 9 at the end of the third quarter. They pulled away in the fourth quarter helped by Miami's sloppy play and turnovers.
The loss was devastating for Miami, a team that seemed to be put together for a championship. Before the season the Heat added perennial all-star forward Chris Bosh and superstar forward LeBron James to a team that was headed by talented guard Dwayne Wade.
The win earns the first championship for star power forward Nowitzki. It also means his Mavericks avenged their crushing loss against the Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals.
Officials said the organisation, which is searching for a new head after Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York last month and accused of sexual assault, has been hit before but the latest attack was more significant and sophisticated.
A spokesman said that the incident was being investigated and the fund was "fully functional". It is believed the attack involved a method known as "spear phishing" in which an individual is tricked into clicking on a bogus Web link.
The IMF collects sensitive information about the financial systems of its 187 member nations. If leaked, some data in IMF computer systems could be used to manipulate or profit from bonds and currencies around the world.
Tom Kellermann, a former cybersecurity specialist at the World Bank who has been tracking the incident, told the "Wall Street Journal" that the infiltration involved significant reconnaissance before the actual attack and code written specifically to penetrate the IMF.
"This isn't malware you've seen before," he said. It was much more difficult to detect and the concern was hackers intended to gather information that could have moved markets. He added that attackers appeared to have broad access giving them sight of IMF plans relating to bailing out the economies of countries.
The IMF has been a central player in the bailout programmes for Ireland, Greece and Portugal and holds sensitive data on other countries that may be edging towards crisis. Its database contains details of negotiations with national leaders as they hammer out the terms of international bailouts.
Staff at the IMF were told of the attack in an internal memo last Wednesday from Jonathan Palmer, the IMF's Chief Information Officer. It said that suspicious file transfers had taken place and that an investigation had shown a desktop computer "had been compromised and used to access some Fund systems".
The memo stated: "At this point, we have no reason to believe that any personal information was sought for fraud purposes."
Mohan Koo, a cyber security specialist who is managing director of Dtex Systems (UK) said that a recent spate of attacks on large global organisations showed that hacking was carefully planned rather than opportunistic.
"Perhaps most frightening of all is the fact that these type of attacks could quite easily be directed towards Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) organisations, for example energy and water, where the impact of such a breach would have severe, immediate and potentially life-threatening consequences for everyday citizens."
Last week, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, told Congress on June 9 that the United States faced the "real possibility" of a devastating cyber attack on the electricity grid, security, financial and governmental systems.
Alternative vehicles are still "alternative" in part because fuel cell and battery technologies still have many hills to climb -- cost, efficiency, weight to name a few. A group of MIT researchers thinks they can pave the way. They recently combined the strongest aspects of traditional batteries and fuel cells to create a whole new kind of battery.
"It's a flowing electrode that's electrically conductive all of the time. That's the secret sauce," said Yet-Ming Chiang, the professor of material science and engineering at MIT who led the development. His interdisciplinary team included researchers Mihai Duduta, Bryan Ho, Pimpa Limthongkul, Vanessa Wood, Victor Brunini, MIT professors Craig Carter, Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond, and Rutgers University professor Glenn Amatucci.
The battery is similar to flow batteries that have been in existence for decades. However, unlike the low-energy batteries of the past, the new battery has a semi-solid flow system that relies on the flow of a concentrated energy-dense suspension of particles dubbed "Cambridge crude." Another key difference is that the battery separates the reactor from the reactants.
This goo system has several advantages over fuel cell and regular lithium-ion battery technology, Chiang said. For one, it allows a larger percentage of the battery to store energy. "We can go directly from the electrodes and entirely bypass the cell-making part," he said.
Chiang also expects their battery will lower costs because its structure is simpler to manufacture and reduces the expensive components that don't carry energy. "We can produce the flowing electrodes in a mixing operation and then simply use them to fill a device that's basically bolted together," he said.
The electro-chemical fuel can be reused so drivers could feasibly swap out a spent tank of for one that's been charged. Since the batteries decouple energy and power, fueling stations could offer different types of electro-chemical fuel.
"If you would like high-power fuel, we could give you high-power fuel. If you would like longer-range fuel: 'premium range,'" Chiang said. This would give drivers the ability to get electro-chemical fuel tailored to their operating conditions -- as well as the season. Electrolyte chemists usually design for the broadest range of temperatures, giving up performance at the high and low ends.
"The sweet spot we're aiming for is a battery with enough power for any vehicle application but with the longest run-time possible," Chiang said
Dan Steingart is an assistant professor in chemical engineering at the City College of New York who works on developing batteries for grid-scale applications.
"This battery is a sort of a hybrid of the best parts of a traditional battery and a fuel cell," he said of the semi-solid flow battery design. Being able to recharge the waste stream is one of the main advantages, he added. "It's as if you had a way of capturing the carbon and water and turning it back into gasoline at the gas station."
But Steingart cautions that significant challenges remain. Making sure the slurry flows reliably without clogging lines is going to be one of them, he said. Another will be getting the "Cambridge crude" in and out of the battery safely, and then scaling that up.
"How do you come up with a plumbing solution to get around that?" he asked. "That will make these guys a lot of money, or ultimately sink them."
Chiang and 24M Technologies aim to have a first commercial prototype ready within two years and, if all goes well, the first commercial systems could be in production during the later part of this decade.
"People talk about 'range anxiety,'" Chiang said. "Our goal is to provide 'range euphoria.'"
[discovery]
I understand that when married couples decide they don't like each other any more, they sometimes opt for extreme feelings and gestures.
No wife, though, has perhaps expressed herself in quite as socially networked way as Angela Voelkert.
Voelkert, according to court records obtained by the Smoking Gun, decided to use Facebook to see if she could find out what was really in her husband's mind.
She created a Facebook profile for a superficially attention-grabbing teenage girl called Jessica Studebaker. Her first step was for her creation to friend her estranged husband. Her next step was to persuade a trusted friend to be Studebaker's typing fingers and to entice her husband, David, into communication.
This allegedly worked better than many might imagine. Soon, the court papers declare, David Voelkert was e-mailing his newfound Ms. Studebaker and revealing details of plans to disappear with his children.
It seems that Voelkert might be technically inclined, given that he owns a South Bend, Ind., business called Secured Alarms, some of whose customers are allegedly police departments.
So a Facebook message he allegedly wrote to Studebaker might just have tipped the balance in the eyes of the FBI. It is said to have read: "O.K. Here is the deal. I had a GPS tracker on my van and I took it off earlier, it was just installed on my ex-wife's van so I can track her and know where she goes."
He then allegedly made suggestions that he would find someone to "take care of" his ex-wife.
Oddly, the FBI allegations in these court papers suggest that David Voelkert then believed he could leave for another state and that Studebaker, whom he'd never met (given that she didn't exist), would come with him.
David Voelkert has been charged (and appeared in court yesterday) with installing a listening device into his wife's car. He has not been charged with threats towards his wife.
It is not clear where the picture of the invented Ms. Studebaker came from, but the profile is currently still up on Facebook.
