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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Bre Pettis, Jeff Clavier, And Matt Rogers Will Join Us At Hardware Battlefield In Vegas

With the rise of crowdfunding and easier paths to manufacturing, there are more gadgeteers than ever before. And we’re looking for some of the best hardware startups to compete on our Las Vegas stage for a giant $50,000 check, tons of publicity and the brand new Hardware Battlefield cup.

We are pleased to announce that Makerbot’s Bre Pettis, VC Jeff Clavier, and Nest founder Matt Rogers have all agreed to be judges for the competition. Each one will bring their years of experience to bear on what should be an amazing event.

Like Startup Battlefield, this new competition will pit 20 hardware startups against each other. The winner will be chosen by VCs, makers and TechCrunch Editors.

The best thing? The Hardware Battlefield is taking place at CES 2014 in Las Vegas but is open to all comers and you don’t need a conference badge to enter, attend the battlefield events, or simply spectate. Our goal is to find the diamond in the CE rough. We don’t care about Samsung, Sony, and Philips -– we care about you.

It’s free to enter. The competition is open to all hardware companies who are planning to launch (crowdfund or ship) product in a two week window before or after January 10. You can still be in prototyping stage but you must have a working, usable product by January 7 and be ready to offer pre-orders on that day or soon thereafter. We recommend launching your crowdsourcing page during the event, however, as it will have maximum impact.

We will have more details shortly but for now we invite you to submit your product. The rules are simple:

1. You must launch your product or crowdfunding campaign before January 7.
2. You must be a single proprietor or small company.
3. This must not be a feature update to an existing product.
4. You must be able to attend rehearsals and sessions in Las Vegas prior to CES and during the show.
5. You must launch first with TechCrunch and approach other media after you appear on our stage.

We will pick 15 entrants on October 30 and announce the location, time, and judges closer to the event. The grand prize winner will get $50,000 to go towards research, development, or whatever else your team needs to get by. All projects will be kept confidential until January 7.

We are very excited about this new event and we want to make it the best one ever. Remember to email sponsors@techcrunch.com if you’d like to sponsor the festivities and if you have any questions email john@techcrunch.com. We look forward to seeing what you’re working and we hope to see you in Vegas!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/21qxXnFAx1k/
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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Security firm releases tool to audit SAP's HANA

October 16, 2013

By Jeremy Kirk | IDG News Service

A new tool from security vendor Onapsis aims to secure SAP's in-memory database HANA, the German company's fastest-growing data processing product.

Onapsis, a Boston-based company that specializes in SAP security, will incorporate the tool into its X1 suite, which scans for vulnerabilities and configuration problems in SAP deployments.

[ Prevent corporate data leaks with Roger Grimes' "Data Loss Prevention Deep Dive" PDF expert guide, only from InfoWorld. | Stay up to date on the latest security developments with InfoWorld's Security Central newsletter. ]

HANA is a cornerstone of SAP's strategy to compete with Oracle and IBM. Available as a cloud service and an appliance, it's designed to process analytical and transaction workloads much faster for SAP's ERP, CRM, supply chain and business intelligence applications.

HANA became generally available last year, and SAP has called it the fastest-growing product in its history, with more than 1,000 customers at the end of 2012.

But the product is "so new that there is no real practical knowledge on how to secure it," according to Onapsis CEO Mariano Nunez.

The HANA modules in X1 perform automated scans that check if a HANA's configuration matches SAP's security guidelines for the platform. They look for problems such as missing patches, users with excessive permissions, dangerous SAP XS Engine applications, missing audit trails and weak passwords, among other issues.

The modules prioritize the risks administrators should mitigate and continuously monitor HANA for new risks, Nunez said. The HANA modules will be available in November as a free update for existing X1 customers.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/vulnerability-assessment/security-firm-releases-tool-audit-saps-hana-228867
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What President Taft Can Teach Us About Weight Loss

By Jody Lin, M.D.

President William Howard Taft didn't have it easy.

Everyone who has taken a White House tour knows by now that his administration marked the installation of the largest presidential bathtub. Legend has it he once got stuck in it.

Are fitness apps making us healthier or driving us crazy?

Widely remembered as a lackluster politician, Taft was our portliest president - a fact that did not go unnoticed by the American populace.

But Taft may yet distinguish himself in another way, according to a new review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. He may be a historical poster child for the future of dieting.

Deborah Levine, a professor of health policy and management at Providence College in Rhode Island, pored over the letters between Taft and famed English diet expert Dr. Nathaniel Yorke-Davies that were written in 1905. What she found was a trans-Atlantic correspondence similar to today's cutting-edge approaches to weight loss, using what are now considered proven weight loss tools along with remote counseling.

Taft's version of the iPad, of course, was an actual pad of paper, and his desktop was, well, a desktop.

But Levine learned from the letters she studied that, in the course of their communications, Taft managed to shave 60 pounds off his more than 300-pound frame.

Nancy Copperman, director of public health initiatives at the North Shore-LIJ Health System, who was not involved in the research, said Taft's letters from more than a century ago still have relevance for today's dieters.

"Here we are over 100 years later … and we're really treating obesity in the same way," she said. "And the things that were used for President Taft to lose weight are now evidence-based strategies."

The letters may also show support for remote counseling as a weight-loss method - particularly interesting as more people use high-tech apps to help their weight-loss efforts. A separate study released last week revealed that 30 of the most popular applications for iPhone and Android devices are for losing weight, although researchers said they were far from perfect.

Sherry Pagoto, a University of Massachusetts researcher behind this study, said the success of these apps come from their ability to help us make connections - much like the one Taft enjoyed with his British diet guru.

"We could have better care with patients and spend less time with them," Pagoto said.

Would you use the Wii Fit Meter?

For right now, most weight-loss apps do a great job of tracking calorie consumption and weight-loss progress, and reminding people to go to the gym. But they still fall short in many ways when it comes to connecting us with those who can help us shed the pounds. And it is this aspect that Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University, said should be improved in future versions of these apps. They don't "write back" as Taft's doctor did.

"If you have an interesting website, an app, and an engaged clinician … the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," said Katz. "The real value of apps is they can populate the space between contact with a physician."

So it might make sense for us to take a page from Taft's letters as these new technologies develop. As "connected" as these devices make us feel, those hoping to lose weight should strive to use new apps or current technology, such as Skype, to keep the communication going between themselves and health providers, even outside the doctor's office.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/president-taft-teach-us-weight-loss-142938964.html
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Report: Microsoft to boost Xbox TV lineup with street soccer series

After snagging CBS exec Nancy Tellem and launching a Halo-based TV series with Steven Spielberg, Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios appears to be tackling a whole new genre. According to Deadline Hollywood, the fledgling TV division will launch its first reality-TV series for Xbox Live based on street soccer called Every Street United. Eight 30-minute episodes will be produced featuring undiscovered talent playing four-on-four soccer across eight different countries. The idea is to have the top eight compete in a climactic final match during the World Cup, though final details are still up in the air. The show will reportedly target Xbox's sports-crazy demographic, though the choice seems a bold move for Microsoft -- which is clearly thinking outside the US box.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/16/xbox-entertainment-studios-street-soccer/?ncid=rss_truncated
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Eating Popcorn at the Movies Makes You Immune to the Advertising

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM
Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011, AT 3:07 PM
Obama Gets Firsthand Look at a Tornado Damage

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM
Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2013/10/eating_and_advertising_popcorn_and_snacks_at_movies_nullify_the_message.html
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TC Cribs: The Lights, Cameras, And Classrooms At CreativeLIVE's San Francisco HQ

Typically, TechCrunch Cribs goes inside tech companies to show a side of them that cameras don't often see. But this episode took us to the San Francisco office of CreativeLIVE, the online education startup that broadcasts its classrooms live to a worldwide audience -- here, cameras are literally part of the furniture.

So in this case, Cribs just turned the cameras on the people who typically turn the camera on others. So meta! It was very fun to see behind the scenes of a truly modern kind of video studio.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CywlIGnbZi0/
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Suspected plotter of 1998 embassy bombings appears in New York court

Christine Cornell

Courtroom sketch of Anas al-Libi in Federal Courthouse iin New York City on October 15, 2013.

By James Novogrod, Jonathan Dienst and Erin McClam, NBC News

A suspected al Qaeda operative captured by U.S. special forces in Libya pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to charges that he helped plan the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa.

The alleged operative, Abu Anas al-Libi, 49, entered his plea via a court-appointed lawyer and then told the judge through an Arabic language translator that he cannot afford a private attorney.

Prosecutors said the case — which includes charges of conspiracy to kill Americans and conspiracy to destroy U.S. defense utilities outside the country — is not eligible for the death penalty.

During the brief hearing, al-Libi — who wore close-cropped hair, a beard, and gray sweatpants and a black shirt — was declared a flight risk and ordered held. He will be back in court again next week.

A key al-Qaeda planner indicted for bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzaniahas been brought to American soil for medical treatment, sparking outrage by some who say he should have been sent to Guantanamo Bay. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

Al-Libi was whisked off the streets of Tripoli on Oct. 5 and held aboard the USS San Antonio, where he was locked in the brig and questioned without Miranda rights, U.S. officials said.

Because of what U.S. officials have described as a serious medical condition — his family says it is severe hepatitis — he was taken within a week to New York, where he has been under indictment since 1998.

Some Republicans in Congress said that he should have been sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for further interrogation.

“This isn’t a question of getting a conviction,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. “It was a question of getting intelligence.”

He is one of 21 men indicted in the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people. He is among nine in custody. Eight have been killed, including Osama bin Laden; one died awaiting trial, and three are at large.

The indictment accuses al-Libi of helping plan the attacks and of conducting surveillance of the embassy and other diplomatic facilities in Nairobi, Kenya.

According to testimony at an earlier embassy bombing trial, it was al-Libi, who was in London at the time of the attacks, who first proposed the bombing of foreign embassies in 1993.

Richard Engel of NBC News contributed to this report.

Related:

Fugitive al Qaeda leader was hardly lying low in Libya, photos show

Slow-motion manhunt: U.S. relentlessly pursues '98 embassy bombing suspects

This story was originally published on Tue Oct 15, 2013 10:38 AM EDT

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/327f7512/sc/11/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C10A0C150C20A9742120Esuspected0Eplotter0Eof0E19980Eembassy0Ebombings0Eappears0Ein0Enew0Eyork0Ecourt0Dlite/story01.htm
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Ford's Theatre in DC to reopen with private funds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ford's Theatre will reopen its doors and resume performances Wednesday, using private funding, even though the government shutdown has continued into a third week.

Theater officials announced Tuesday that the national historic site and performance space will reopen Wednesday. Theater trustee Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman and CEO of MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings Inc., donated $25,000 in emergency funding to pay for the theater's operations for the next eight days.

Ford's Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, is a National Park Service site. A private group runs the theater's programming.

On Wednesday, the theater will resume performances of "The Laramie Project," which is part of the theater's Lincoln Legacy Project focusing on diversity and equality. The production marks 15 years since Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was abducted and killed in Laramie, Wyo. Remaining tickets are $25 each.

The Ford's Theatre Society has been losing about $100,000 in revenue per week since the theater went dark at the start of the highly anticipated "Laramie Project" production due to the government shutdown, said spokeswoman Lauren Beyea. The show will run through Oct. 27, but will not be extended because the actors have other commitments.

An agreement was made to reopen Ford's Theatre after several states agreed to provide funding to reopen national parks in other areas. The National Park Service agreed to a similar arrangement for the theater.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fords-theatre-dc-reopen-private-funds-210722833.html
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The hidden challenges of using cloud backup to replace tape

October 15, 2013

It's no secret: IT pros absolutely love to hate tape. I've remarked on that fact in this column several times over the past few years, and it's no less true now than it was any of the other times I've mentioned it. But that's all changing! What local disk backup couldn't solve on its own, cloud storage providers with their hyperredundant and constantly maintained fleets of disk can certainly fix! Finally, we can put a stake in the heart of tape and it will simply become a ghost story that the old timers tell IT newbs. Right?

Maybe, but not so fast. Although the cloud absolutely can replace some of the use cases for tape, it can't satisfy them for everyone all the time. The very same reasons why tape was still alive and kicking when I wrote about it nearly four years ago are still largely true today.

However, you need not fret if you're itching to get rid of tape and make backup someone else's problem by moving it to the cloud. Things are definitely looking up -- especially if you're working with relatively small amounts of data, can deal with long restoration times, or have ridiculous amounts of bandwidth to spare.

To continue reading, register here to become an Insider

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Source: http://podcasts.infoworld.com/d/data-explosion/the-hidden-challenges-of-using-cloud-backup-replace-tape-228690?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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T-Mobile Is Killing Grandfathered Plans (Updated)

Following several rumors, Engadget has confirmed that T-Mobile is doing away with old data plans and forcing customers to choose from one of its current Simple Choice plans. According to a statement from the company a "vast majority" of customers will get "similar or better features at a comparable price."

Do Elephants Weep as an Emotional Response? (Op-Ed)

Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Bekoff's column Animal Emotions in Psychology Today. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

A recent newspaper article called "Elephant tears: Newborn weeps after being parted from mother who tried to kill him" reports about a newborn male elephant who "cried for five hours without stopping after he was rejected by his mother."

This story immediately made me think of the book When Elephants Weep (Delta, 1996), which helped to open the door to people taking the emotional lives of animals more seriously than they previously had.

I've been studying various aspects of animal behavior and animal emotions for more than four decades, and have published numerous books and essays about these areas of inquiry, so the story about the weeping elephant resulted in my receiving a number of emails and also in doing an interview with Discovery News.

My approach to, and take on, this story, is fairly straightforward. I did a Google search for topics including "Do/can elephants weep?", "Do/can elephants cry?", "Do/can animals weep?", and "Do/can animals cry?" and found some very interesting answers that ranged all over the place from "Sure they do" to "Probably they do", to "No, they don't" I also looked for various positions on whether or not crying/weeping were associated with various emotions as they are in human animals.

In a nutshell, available information supports the view that other animals do cry and weep and that they can be closely associated with various emotions, including, perhaps most likely, sadness and grief that are associated with loss. Of course, crying or weeping may be more hard-wired, in the recent case with the infant elephant responding to a loss of much-needed touch or what is also called "contact comfort" offered by his mother.

One worker quoted in the above article noted, "The calf was very upset and he was crying for five hours before he could be consoled." Humans did try to calm him down but their touch is not the same as another elephant's, and of course there could also be visual and olfactory components associated with the potpourri of contact comfort.

So, while scientists are not 100-percent certain, solid scientific research supports the view that elephants and other nonhuman animals weep as part of an emotional response. Rather than dismissing this possibility as merely storytelling, we need to study it in more detail. After all, "the plural of anecdote is data" and stories and citizen science can and should motivate rigorous scientific research. And, let's not forget that many "surprises" have been discovered in the emotional lives of animals, including laughing rats and dogs and empathic chickens, mice and rats — all published in outstanding peer-reviewed professional journals.

At one website called "Do elephants cry?" I found the following quote: "However, we do not know what emotions elephants feel, if any, in the same manner that we do not necessarily know for sure what emotions other people feel. This is simply because we cannot measure emotions, we can only experience them. As a result, science cannot say whether elephants experience emotions, whether other people experience emotions, or what these emotions are like. This is because science requires that we be able to measure something in order to draw any conclusions about it."

I couldn't find the date this answer was posted but it surely does not reflect current or even recent ideas about the study of human and nonhuman emotions. For example, you can read excellent examples of recent work in such books as "Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans" (Atria Books, 2013) and "Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures" (Crown, 2013)

As with many other aspects of the cognitive and emotional lives of animals, it turns out that we are not alone, and that human exceptionalism is more a myth than a fact. So, I offer that we are not the only animals who cry or weep as an emotional response, though I look forward to more research on this topic.

Bekoff's most recent Op-Ed was "'The Smile of a Dolphin,' Banned in Texas." This article was adapted from "Do Elephants Weep as an Emotional Response?" in Psychology Today. More of the author's essays are available in "Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed." The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on LiveScience.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/elephants-weep-emotional-response-op-ed-163936675.html
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Arkansas AD Long chosen selection committee chair

Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long will be the first chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee, and the rest of the 13-member panel that will decide which teams play for the 2014 national championship will be officially revealed Wednesday.

The announcement of Long to lead the committee and act as a spokesman was made Monday.

A news conference will be held Wednesday at the College Football Playoff's new offices in Irving, Texas, with Long and executive director Bill Hancock unveiling the rest of the members.

The names of the other members expected to be on the committee, however, already have been reported by The Associated Press and other media outlets.

Long is among five current athletic directors, along with West Virginia's Oliver Luck, Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez, Clemson's Dan Radakovich and Southern California's Pat Haden.

Also expected on the committee are: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; retired Lt. Gen Michael Gould; former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese; former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne; former Notre Dame, Stanford and Washington coach Tyrone Willingham; former NFL and Mississippi quarterback Archie Manning; former NCAA vice president Tom Jernstedt; and former college sports writer Steve Wieberg.

The committee will pick the four teams to play in the national semifinals in the new postseason system that will replace the Bowl Championship Series after this season. The winners will play about a week later for the national championship.

Long has led the athletic department at Arkansas since 2008 after holding the same position at Pittsburgh. He played football and baseball at Ohio Wesleyan and worked on the football staffs at Rice, North Carolina State, Duke and Michigan.

"I'm very humbled and honored to serve as the first chairman of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee," Long said in a statement. "There is no doubt our task will be challenging. However, I am confident in the committee members' ability to determine the four best teams in college football. I look forward to getting to work."

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-14-Playoff%20Committee/id-65cbaf726b974854bbb7788de8acdf7d
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Monday, October 14, 2013

How Do We Know What We Know? Three Nobel-Winning Approaches

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announces the winners of the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in Stockholm Monday. The prize went to U.S. professors Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller.

Claudio Bresciani/AP

Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert Shiller were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics today for their efforts to answer to a key question: How do the prices of assets like stocks and real estate behave over time?

They came to rather different answers to that question. The markets are rational and efficient, Fama has argued; not so much, has been Shiller's reply. This difference has been widely discussed today.

But it's also worth pointing out how differently these three economists study the world, which points to a much bigger question: How do we know what we know in economics, or indeed in any social science? The three winners of today's Nobel Prize in economics differ not only in their conclusions, but also in their ways of knowing.

Fama is an empiricist, and studies the world of asset prices from his computer screen. For nearly 50 years he has been examining price movements, minute by minute year by year. Perusing the 105 research papers on Fama's CV makes clear his way of knowing: Millions of "observations" that is, price data points — examined with exactitude. From these millions of data points – consistently observed — Fama has discerned what is. In this way of knowing, one need not venture out. The beauty of staying inside is the consistency of the weather: it is possible, in empirical testing, to control for much of the messiness outside. A "clean" empirical test a good one.

Shiller, on the other hand, is nothing if not out. Though his early methods were similar to Fama's, Shiller's recent work begins with the premise that the world cannot be understood through data points alone. His work pioneered the use of psychology in understanding market behavior, inviting the messiness of the human mind into the conversation. While Fama watched price behavior, Shiller watched human behavior, and then developed ideas about the mechanisms by which one influenced the other.

Hansen is a scientist's scientist, the quantitative heavyweight of the three. Unlike Fama or Shiller, he has no position to defend. Instead he has made his mark designing ways to statistically ask and answer questions about how prices behave. His contribution is in accurate and creative measurement. Advances in measurement advance our ability to incorporate the messiness of the world into clean empirical tests, in fact, to bring Shiller and Fama into one another's orbit.

How do we know what we know? We examine data, we study people, and then we measure everything as best we can. We need all three.

Pietra Rivoli is Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/14/234234987/how-do-we-know-what-we-know-three-nobel-winning-approaches?ft=1&f=
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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Shutdown's Reach Extends To South Pole

Research season was just getting started when the government shutdown put McMurdo Station into "caretaker" mode, halting data collection. Host Scott Simon speaks to Gretchen Hofmann, a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, about the government shutdown's impact on research in Antarctica.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=232622003&ft=1&f=1007
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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Classic Cars: The Best 'Alternative Investment' of All - Yahoo Finance

This week hundreds of thousands of car enthusiasts will descend on Hershey Park in Pennsylvania for the annual classic car show and auction. The value of classic cars has jumped 39% this year, according to the Historic Automobile Group Index (HAGI), which tracks the financial performance of 50 rare and exotic classic cars. These cars have outperformed collectibles such as gold, wine, art, stamps and coins over the last 10 years. And more investors turned to cars after the global stock selloff in 2008.

Related: Jim Grant’s Top 3 “Undervalued” Assets

Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, Bugattis, Bentleys, Aston Martins and Duesenbergs often sell for millions of dollars every year at the world famous Concours D'Elegance Pebble Beach and Amelia Island auctions, but classic cars have never been the exclusive toys of the rich and famous. Last month on the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ, owners of Corvettes, Fords, Chevys, Pontiacs and Plymouths were proudly showing off their cars to judges and the public, hoping to win a “best in show” prize. Inside the Wildwood Convention Hall, more than 100 muscle and antique cars were up for auction, at prices the average car fan could afford.

David Gooding, president and founder of auction house Gooding & Co., has sold thousands of classic cars over the years. He says the beauty, mystique and history of these cars are what make them so valuable and coveted by collectors from around the globe. The auction house had a 91% sale rate at the two-day Pebble Beach auction in California, with an average price per lot of $965,675. Thirty of the 127 cars Gooding offered at Pebble Beach sold for more than a $1 million a piece, including the $8.745 million sale of a 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante, a new world record for a Bugatti sold at auction. Gooding says 75% of classic car buyers are based in the U.S. but there has been growing interest from new collectors in Asia, the Middle East and South America.

Related: Ferrari 250 GTO sells for $52 million in latest world record

“Automobiles are recognized as an art form,” he tells The Daily Ticker. “People are realizing they are exciting to collect. You can drive them and take them around the world. A car can be a passport to adventure.”

The classic car that has seen the greatest price appreciation is the Ferrari. A 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO racer was acquired this summer in a private sale for more than $52 million, making it the world’s most expensive car. It beat the previous all-time record of $27.5 million for a 1967 Ferrari 275 Spyder that was sold in Monterey, Calif. in August. The HAGI Ferrari Index has gained 44% since January but Dietrich Hatlapa, founder of the Historic Auto Group Index, worries that the recent explosion in the classic car market may be due for a correction.

“Classic cars have been a very good performer in terms of value appreciation and the financial crisis helped classic cars and collectible markets,” says Hatlapa in a phone interview from Europe. “But some of the growth rates we’ve seen are not sustainable in the long term. The art and wine markets have already corrected. You really have to know what you’re doing.”

Don Williams, a classic car dealer and collector, rejects the idea that the classic car market could be a bubble.

“A bubble is when people are speculating with borrowed money,” he explains. “I think [classic cars] are the most solid form of investing in the world. Where gold keeps getting dug up, stocks keep getting printed, the cars are very, very limited. We’re in an infancy level compared to any other form of investing. The hobby has expanded so internationally that we have 10, 20, maybe 30 times as many potential buyers than cars.”

Related: Jim Rogers: Gold Could Fall to $900 in Next 1-2 Years

Williams, president of the internationally known Blackhawk Museum in California and owner of The Auto Collections in Las Vegas, has been described “as the man who buys and sells more million dollar cars than anyone in the business.” His personal collection of 100 cars includes a $7 million Bugatti and a 1966 Chevy Impala convertible. In his 40 years of collecting, Williams has owned between 8,000 to 10,000 cars: "I'm addicted," he admits. Even with rising prices, Williams encourages individuals who have always wanted a classic car to take the plunge.

“Not everybody is equipped financially to just start collecting at the high-end level,” Williams notes. “Buy one that you can personally afford, one that will bring enjoyment to your life, not a financial burden. Cars have brought a lot of friends into my life. It cuts through all language barriers.”

Tell Us What You Think!

Do you own a classic car? Have you attended the major car auctions? Send an email to: thedailyticker@yahoo.com.

You can also look us up on Twitter and Facebook.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013

Ill. GOP chairman survives latest ouster attempt (The Arizona Republic)

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Sen. Bill Nelson announces NASA's plan to capture asteroid

NASA will use a robotic spaceship to capture an asteroid and bring it closer to the moon. Astronauts will then explore the asteroid in the hopes of developing technology to nudge dangerous asteroids away from Earth.

By Seth Borenstein,?AP Science Writer / April 6, 2013

The Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 crew module is seen in the Operations and Checkout building during a media tour at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. in January. Senate Science and Space subcommittee Chairman Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. says President Barack Obama and NASA are planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon.

John Raoux/AP

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The US space agency is planning for a robotic spaceship to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator disclosed Friday.

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The plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth, Sen. Bill Nelson said.

The robotic ship would capture the 500-ton, 25-foot (450 metric-ton, 7.6-meter) asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, now being developed, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

Nelson said this would help?NASA?develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said.

Nelson, chairman of the Senate science and space subcommittee, said President Barack Obama is putting $100 million in planning money for the accelerated asteroid mission in the 2014 budget that comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid.

"It really is a clever concept," Nelson said in a news conference in Florida, the state where?NASA?launches take place. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back."

While there are thousands of asteroids that size out there, finding the right one that comes by Earth at just the right time to be captured will not be easy, said Donald Yeomans, who heads?NASA's?Near Earth Object program that monitors close-by asteroids. He said once a suitable rock is found, it would be captured with the space equivalent of "a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it."

Yeomans said an asteroid of that size is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth's atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, he said.

The government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would inspire because it "will send humans farther than they have ever been before."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/TJaz4FPKm5A/Sen.-Bill-Nelson-announces-NASA-s-plan-to-capture-asteroid

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When 79-year-old Evie Branan suffered a massive stroke six years ago, it left her in a semicomatose state. Branan was unable to eat, speak, or move on her own, and she became a resident of Willowbrook Manor, a long-term care facility in Flint, Michigan. With the help of her family and the caregivers at Willowbrook, [...]

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-home-now-available-select-android-smartphones-182003444.html

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Arctic nearly free of summer sea ice during first half of 21st century, experts predict

Apr. 12, 2013 ? For scientists studying summer sea ice in the Arctic, it's not a question of "if" there will be nearly ice-free summers, but "when." And two scientists say that "when" is sooner than many thought -- before 2050 and possibly within the next decade or two.

James Overland of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and Muyin Wang of the NOAA Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington, looked at three methods of predicting when the Arctic will be nearly ice free in the summer. The work was published recently online in the American Geophysical Union publication Geophysical Research Letters.

"Rapid Arctic sea ice loss is probably the most visible indicator of global climate change; it leads to shifts in ecosystems and economic access, and potentially impacts weather throughout the northern hemisphere," said Overland. "Increased physical understanding of rapid Arctic climate shifts and improved models are needed that give a more detailed picture and timing of what to expect so we can better prepare and adapt to such changes. Early loss of Arctic sea ice gives immediacy to the issue of climate change."

"There is no one perfect way to predict summer sea ice loss in the Arctic," said Wang. "So we looked at three approaches that result in widely different dates, but all three suggest nearly sea ice-free summers in the Arctic before the middle of this century."

Overland and Wang emphasized that the term "nearly" ice free is important as some sea ice is expected to remain north of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland.

The "trendsetters" approach uses observed sea ice trends. These data show that the total amount of sea ice decreased rapidly over the previous decade. Using those trends, this approach extrapolates to a nearly sea ice-free Arctic by 2020.
The "stochasters" approach is based on assuming future multiple, but random in time, large sea ice loss events such as those that occurred in 2007 and 2012. This method estimates it would take several more events to reach a nearly sea ice-free state in the summer. Using the likelihood of such events, this approach suggests a nearly sea ice-free Arctic by about 2030 but with large uncertainty in timing.
The "modelers" approach is based on using the large collection of global climate model results to predict atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice conditions over time. These models show the earliest possible loss of sea ice to be around 2040 as greenhouse gas concentrations increase and the Arctic warms. But the median timing of sea ice loss in these models is closer to 2060. There are several reasons to consider that this median timing of sea ice loss in these models may be too slow.

"Some people may interpret this to mean that models are not useful. Quite the opposite," said Overland. "Models are based on chemical and physical climate processes and we need better models for the Arctic as the importance of that region continues to grow."

Taken together, the range among the multiple approaches still suggests that it is very likely that the timing for future sea ice loss will be within the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

James E. Overland, Muyin Wang. When will the summer arctic be nearly sea ice free? Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50316

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/UlBj8_buaZk/130412142848.htm

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Exxon working to remove damaged part of Arkansas oil pipeline

By Kristen Hays

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp was working on Friday to remove the ruptured section of its Arkansas crude oil pipeline, but had no estimate on how long repairs would take or when the line would restart.

Exxon expected to remove the damaged section this week. The company did not have a more definitive timeframe on Friday, spokeswoman Kim Jordan said.

She said the length of the portion being removed from the Pegasus pipeline that ruptured two weeks ago would be determined once excavation to reach it had finished. Exxon said that portion would be sent to an independent, third-party laboratory for metallurgy testing.

However, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who launched an investigation into the 5,000-barrel oil spill, said earlier this week that the rupture was more than 22 feet long and two inches wide.

McDaniel said his office had retained private Washington D.C. disaster-response firm Witt O'Brien's to analyze independently Exxon's cleanup process.

Some residents evacuated from their neighborhood when the rupture sent crude spilling in yards and streets have the option to return to their homes, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Health said on Friday.

"It's recommended that they go through a little bit of airing out. Their homes have been closed up," the spokesman, Ed Barham, said.

He said the affected residents in the neighborhood in Mayflower, a town about 25 miles north of Little Rock, can continue air monitoring if they so choose after their return.

Exxon said the company was developing a plan to address concerns about long-term values of the affected homes, "up to and including home purchases".

(Reporting by Kristen Hays; Editing by Dale Hudson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exxon-working-remove-damaged-part-arkansas-oil-pipeline-191349109--finance.html

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