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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৪ অক্টোবর, ২০১৩
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It’s Thursday! Take a minute to click through today’s links: All the details of Prince George‘s royal christening — PEOPLE.com Breastmilk bought online may be contaminated — USA TODAY VIDEO: Children’s hospital performs Katy Perry‘s “Roar” — HuffPost Good News 9 luxe christening gifts worthy of the royals — POPSUGAR Moms Autumn Reeser: How I’m feathering […]Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/CnV2y4Y11GQ/
Tags: Jeff Soffer Under the Dome apple event cbs sports food network star
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Coral chemicals protect against warming oceans
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Australian marine scientists have found the first evidence that coral itself may play an important role in regulating local climate.They have discovered that the coral animal--not just its algal symbiont--makes an important sulphur-based molecule with properties to assist it in many ways, ranging from cellular protection in times of heat stress to local climate cooling by encouraging clouds to form.Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/sip-ccp102313.php
Category: clemson Robinson Cano Derek Medina
Category: clemson Robinson Cano Derek Medina
Disaster Breeds Disaster
Photo courtesy of Gene Page/AMC
In the TV series The Walking Dead, the characters inhabit a world overrun by zombies—specifically, zombies caused by a mysterious virus that has apparently infected everyone in the population. The living keep the virus in check by unknown means. But when someone dies—whether quickly after being bitten by a “walker” or felled by a human nemesis or more slowly due to natural causes—the result is the same: After death, everyone is reanimated as a bloodthirsty zombie. The pandemic survivors come to realize that the zombies aren’t their only enemies: The living can be even more dangerous than the undead. The group of main characters has spent several seasons searching for a safe haven against both walkers and unsavory living people. The beginning of Season 4 finds them ensconced in a prison, the series regulars merged with new characters from the nearby town of Woodbury.
The premise that all living people are already infected with the zombie virus was introduced in Season 1, during a foray to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the lone remaining CDC scientist—Edwin Jenner—informed Rick, the de facto leader of the survivors, of this fact. (However, Rick didn’t tell the rest of the group—and thus the audience—this particular tidbit of information until the end of Season 2.) To date, this revelation has been the central plot point, in terms of public health. Unlike the movie version of World War Z, there has been little attention paid to how this zombie pandemic began or how to end it—the focus is on daily survival. Understanding the virus probably wouldn’t matter much at this point in any case—mathematical modeling has shown that, unless you hit hard and hit early, there’s pretty much no stopping a zombie pandemic once it starts. Add on the fact that, based on the survivors’ CDC experience, all research into the cause (and therefore any cure, treatment, or prevention) has stopped … well, the ragtag group appears to be on its own.
It might not seem like things could get any worse, but as the group found out in this week’s episode, “Infected,” the zombie pandemic virus isn’t the only killer pathogen out there. We know from all-too-real examples that one disaster often breeds another. In the real world, an ongoing cholera outbreak is plaguing Haiti. After the 2010 earthquake, United Nations troops inadvertently introduced the pathogen, and the country lost much of its health infrastructure during the earthquake. The HIV pandemic has exacerbated other infectious diseases, such as multidrug resistant tuberculosis, particularly in Africa. Wars and their resulting refugee camps are breeding grounds for a multitude of infectious diseases, including deadly respiratory and diarrheal infections. As routine vaccination programs lapse in disaster areas, killers such as measles, tetanus, and polio can make a resurgence.
The principle that disaster breeds disaster is what our long-suffering group discovered on Sunday’s episode. In the midst of the infectious zombie pandemic, another killer germ arose, quickly leading to the death of new character Patrick in a rather gruesome manner. The new virus seems to be influenza (and probably swine influenza). Hershel, a veterinarian, notes that influenza can be transmitted to humans from pigs and birds—it’s a zoonotic infection. Rick adds that he saw a sick boar during a prior excursion in the woods and that he saw other zombies along the fence outside their prison home that resembled the recently reanimated Patrick: trailing blood from their eyes, nose, and lips. Another character, Dr. Subramanian, explains that this is due to pressure building up in the lungs from the infection, and then it’s “like you shake a soda can and pop the top, only your eyes, ears, nose, and throat are the top.”
Could such a diagnosis be made in the middle of an apocalypse?
In our world, swine flu usually isn’t fatal, nor is it highly contagious among humans. Clinical manifestations like those that affected Patrick would be exceedingly rare, though some have been seen from the novel H1N1 virus, which originated in swine and caused a 2009 pandemic, and also from the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, which was of avian origin. (And, breaking out at the end of World War I, the 1918 pandemic is a prime example of an epidemiological disaster facilitated by the disaster of war.) The coughing symptoms some of the survivors are showing would also be consistent with influenza infections, but that’s hardly diagnostic—many respiratory germs cause coughing.
Hershel, as a veterinarian, should also be considering other pathogens that could sicken both people and pigs. One that immediately comes to mind is called Streptococcus suis, a bacterium that causes flu-like symptoms and can jump between swine and humans. It can also cause hemorrhagic (bleeding) manifestations, as noted in an outbreak in China in 2005. The big difference between S. suis and flu is that the former is not known to be transmitted among humans—people who get sick with it are usually in direct contact with pigs, so Rick and his son Carl, who had been raising pigs on a farm within the fenced prison grounds, would be at the highest risk for infection.
Photo courtesy of Gene Page/AMC
Why is a diagnosis important? The group decides in this episode to isolate people who are showing symptoms of the disease. (The next episode, in fact, is called “Isolation.”) If the pathogen is indeed swine influenza, and if it was already spreading among the humans in the prison, Rick’s step of sacrificing the piglets to the zombie horde would do little to nothing to stop the illness. If, however, it was S. suis, isolation probably wouldn’t even be necessary—keeping people away from the pigs should do the trick and end the epidemic.
Could such a diagnosis be made in the middle of an apocalypse? Definitively, probably not—but the group has both a veterinarian and a physician within the prison. It wouldn’t take much to do a crude epidemiological analysis, asking those who are coughing if they’d been exposed to pigs or how much time they’d spent around other (possibly sick) people. If all the sick people cluster together and haven’t been around the pigs at all, flu is a more logical choice, which may have originated in the pigs or the people. (An overcrowded prison, with people mixing from two recently assimilated communities, is certainly a great place for infectious diseases to spread.) To complicate matters, Rick correctly mentions to Carl at the end of the episode that the pigs could have made people sick or people could have sickened the pigs—many germs don’t care about species boundaries. There’s also the mysterious rat-feeder introduced in Sunday’s episode: Someone within the prison is catching live rats and feeding them to the zombie horde lingering outside the prison gates. Rats are notorious vectors of disease. Do they play a role in this new outbreak?
More answers may come in the next episodes. Perhaps the zombie virus itself will jump species, as it does in Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin series (zombie boars) or Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy (zombie bears). Animals may have more to fear from a zombie pandemic than was previously thought.
Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/10/the_walking_dead_virus_the_epidemiology_and_science_of_zombies.html
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Caterpillar leads Dow lower as a stock rally fades
NEW YORK (AP) — A four-day streak of record closes is ending for the Standard & Poor's 500 index after Caterpillar reported weak earnings and falling oil prices hurt energy stocks.
Caterpillar, which makes mining and construction equipment, led the Dow Jones industrial average lower after reporting a plunge in third-quarter earnings. That discouraged investors and stalled a two-week surge in the stock market.
Energy stocks dropped as the price of oil fell to its lowest in almost four months.
The S&P 500 fell eight points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,746. The Dow gave up 54 points to close at 15,413 and the Nasdaq composite fell 22 points, or 0.6 percent, to 3,907.
More stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was heavier than usual at 3.7 billion shares.
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Netflix Could Be the Next Big TV Network | Daily ... - Yahoo Finance
Wall Street is betting heavily that Netflix (NFLX) will soon be the next big TV network – and maybe already is.
In the past few months, the streaming-video service surpassed Time Warner Inc.’s (TWX) HBO in paid U.S. subscribers, with 31 million viewers agreeing to pay Netflix $7.99 a month for unlimited access to movies and TV series – including its own hit original programs “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards.” The latter, of course, became the first series to win an Emmy without ever having aired on broadcast or cable TV.
Related: Worried About Netflix's Sky High Stock Price? So Is Reed Hastings
In reporting a quadrupling of profits late Monday, Netflix said its users streamed five billion hours of programming in the third quarter, up 25% from the first three months of the year. Only the Big Four broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC – serve up more program hours than Netflix.
Through its sophisticated personalization software, Netflix serves up suggested shows and movies that it anticipates a user might like, increasing its share of their entertainment-consumption time. The company is now trying to become a feature on cable and satellite systems’ set-top boxes alongside traditional networks, further blurring the line between direct-subscription serves and “bundled” monthly programming plans.
The company, which began as a DVD-rental-by-mail novelty service, is now among the largest buyers and developers of films and TV shows in media. It spends some $2 billion a year on video content. While most of it is created and released by other media outlets – such as full seasons of “Scandal” and “Breaking Bad” - Netflix is aggressively increasing its commitment to producing its own exclusive series. It will soon introduce second seasons of “House of Cards” and “Lilyhammer,” as well as “Derek” and “Hemlock Grove.” The company says it will double its spending on original programming in the next year.
Related: Netflix Owns Nothing, Is Poised for Short-Term Drop: Pachter
Excitement over Netflix’s potential to grow into a near-universal, all-you-can-view service has dazzled investors and made Netflix shares among the hottest in the market.
It’s hard to dispute, in fact, that Netflix shares are expensive. The more interesting questions are whether the shares are wildly overvalued by a herd of deluded momentum investors, or properly pricey to account for the company’s stellar growth record and vast opportunities to grab an enormous share of the paid media economy.
And what, if anything, should Netflix and CEO Reed Hastings consider doing to take advantage of its towering valuation?
With a $23 billion market value after the stock’s 300% surge this year to $381 following strong quarterly results, the streaming-video leader is valued at $550 per subscriber, six-times this year’s revenue and more than 100-times next year’s forecast earnings – all many times the multiples of peer companies and the broad market. Even Hastings granted that the stock’s rocking performance seems driven in part by investor “euphoria.”
The Daily Ticker's Henry Blodget is inclined to give the company, and the stock, the benefit of the doubt. “You don’t know whether it’s overvalued – nobody does,” he said in the above video. "Most of the people who are ridiculing it right here at $400 a share were ridiculing it at $70."
Related: How Amazon's Mayday Could Change Your World and Disrupt Apple
“What they have done is replicate the HBO strategy of, replicate other people’s stuff, add on the cream of your own stuff. They are the future. TV is going to route on all these different ways” – any place, any time, on any device, says Blodget.
Netflix is ingeniously piggybacking on the expensive high-speed broadband infrastructure built by cable and telecom giants in recent years. By one Barclays Capital estimate, Netflix is responsible for about a third of all “downstream” Internet traffic.
The company is investing heavily to acquire and create content and to market the brand worldwide, sacrificing near-term profits to establish itself as the global leader in one-stop entertainment.
Blodget compares Netflix to Amazon.com (AMZN), which has always forgone the chance to earn lush profits in order to plow money back into expanding the brand into new products and platforms. Wall Street has rewarded Amazon nicely for this strategy, recognizing perhaps that it has a huge opportunity to become ever-more indispensable to consumers and could choose to reap higher earnings any time it so chooses in the future.
This may be true, but at some price a stock’s valuation and the expectations of Wall Street will be too high, and any slight stumble in subscriber growth or a dud original series could trigger a nasty reversal in the stock.
At some point, Netflix might find that its appetite for rapid growth and ever-more-compelling programming makes acquiring a big content producer important to ensure access to exclusive, original shows and films. As such networks like HBO and AMC Networks (AMCX) have shown, the continuing loyalty of viewers requires a steady succession of addictive, resonant hit series such as “Game of Thrones” and “Mad Men.”
Such a company as Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF), as an example, is a scrappy maker of series and movies with a knack for buzz-worthy hits. With a market value of about one-quarter that of Netflix, such a hypothetical deal would certainly seem doable.
Then again, Netflix might be fine shopping for great entertainment on the open market for a long time to come. This still leaves open the question of whether Netflix ought to take advantage of its high stock price by issuing more shares to a voracious, enraptured investing crowd. Some on Wall Street are suggesting just that, selling a couple of billion dollars worth of stock to build its cash war chest, to be used in building up its content library and marketing campaigns to quicken subscriber growth.
Netflix executives were asked on the earnings conference call whether the company might look to raise more capital given how high the stock is and how cheap it is to sell debt currently. CFO David Wells said, “we don't feel capital-constrained right now in terms of our pace of expansion. If we did, we would go out and tap the market.”
Of course, it might be tricky for a CEO to get on the road to sell his company’s shares to the public after he suggested the stock has been levitated, in part, by “euphoria.”
Related: The Business of "Breaking Bad" is Good; Netflix Not So Bad Either
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Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/netflix-could-next-big-network-150927256.html
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Lester, Red Sox rout sloppy Cards in Series opener
BOSTON (AP) — An easy toss on a sure out that skittered away. A routine popup that somehow dropped between Gold Glovers. And something even more startling — umpires reversing a key call.
Most everything fell into place for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series opener.
Mike Napoli hit a three-run double right after a game-changing decision in the very first inning, Jon Lester made the early lead stand up and the Red Sox romped past the sloppy St. Louis Cardinals 8-1 Wednesday night for their ninth straight Series win.
A season before Major League Baseball is expected to expand instant replay, fans got to see a preview. The entire six-man crew huddled and flipped a ruling on a forceout at second base — without looking at any video.
"I think based on their group conversation, surprisingly, to a certain extent, they overturned it and I think got the call right," Boston manager John Farrell said.
David Ortiz was robbed of a grand slam by Carlos Beltran — a catch that sent the star right fielder to a hospital with bruised ribs — but Big Papi later hit a two-run homer following third baseman David Freese's bad throw.
The Red Sox also capitalized on two errors by shortstop Pete Kozma to extend a Series winning streak that began when they swept St. Louis in 2004. Boston never trailed at any point in those four games and coasted on this rollicking night at Fenway Park, thanks to a hideous display by the Cardinals,
It got so bad for St. Louis that the sellout crowd literally laughed when pitcher Adam Wainwright and catcher Yadier Molina, who've combined to win six Gold Gloves, let an easy popup drop untouched between them.
Serious-minded St. Louis manager Mike Matheny didn't find anything funny, especially when the umpires changed a call by Dana DeMuth at second base.
"Basically, the explanation is that's not a play I've ever seen before. And I'm pretty sure there were six umpires on the field that had never seen that play before, either," Matheny said.
"It's a pretty tough time to debut that overruled call in the World Series. Now, I get that they're trying to get the right call, I get that. Tough one to swallow," he said.
DeMuth said he never actually saw Kozma drop the ball.
"My vision was on the foot. And when I was coming up, all I could see was a hand coming out and the ball on the ground. All right? So I was assuming," DeMuth told a pool reporter.
There was no dispute, however, that the umpires properly ruled Kozma had not caught a soft toss from second baseman Matt Carpenter on a potential forceout. That's what crew chief John Hirschbeck told Matheny.
"I just explained to him ... that five of us were 100 percent sure," Hirschbeck said. "Our job is to get the play right. And that's what we did."
"I said, 'I know you are not happy with it, that it went against you, but you have to understand that the play is correct,'" he said.
The normally slick-fielding Cardinals looked sloppy at every turn. Wainwright bounced a pickoff throw, Molina let a pitch trickle off his mitt, center fielder Shane Robinson bobbled the carom on Napoli's double and there was a wild pitch.
The Cardinal Way? More like, no way.
"We had a wakeup call. That is not the kind of team that we've been all season," Matheny said. "And they're frustrated. I'm sure embarrassed to a point."
Game 2 is Thursday night, with 22-year-old rookie sensation Michael Wacha starting for St. Louis against John Lackey. Wacha is 3-0 with a 0.43 ERA this postseason.
Beltran is day to day after X-rays were negative.
Lester blanked the Cardinals on five hits over 7 2-3 innings and struck out eight for his third win this postseason.
"We wanted to set the tone and get them swinging," he said.
Ryan Dempster gave up Matt Holliday's leadoff home run in the ninth.
Boston brought the beards and made it a most hairy night for St. Louis. The Cardinals wrecked themselves with just their second three-error game of the season.
The umpires made a mistake, too, but at least they got to fix it in a hurry.
After the control-conscious Wainwright walked leadoff man Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia singled him to second with one out.
Ortiz then hit a slow grounder to Carpenter, and it didn't appear the Cardinals could turn a double play. Hurrying, Kozma let the backhanded flip glance off his glove.
DeMuth instantly called Pedroia out, indicating that Kozma dropped the ball while trying to transfer it to his throwing hand. Farrell quickly popped out of the dugout to argue while Pedroia went to the bench.
Farrell argued with every umpire he could and must've made a persuasive case. As the fans hollered louder and louder as they studied TV replays, all the umpires gathered on the dirt near shortstop and conferred and decided there was no catch at all.
"You rarely see that, especially on a stage like this," Napoli said. "But I think that was good for the game."
Pedroia came bounding from the dugout and suddenly, the bases were loaded in the first. Napoli unloaded them with a double that rolled to the Green Monster in left-center.
Napoli, with maybe the bushiest beard of all, certainly picked up where he left off the last time he saw the Cardinals in October. In the 2011 Series, he hit .350 with two home runs and 10 RBIs as Texas lost in seven games to St. Louis.
The Red Sox added to their 3-0 lead with two more runs in the second. A fielding error by Kozma set up Pedroia's RBI single.
The whole inning got going when Stephen Drew's popup in front of the mound landed at Wainwright's feet, a step or two from Molina. The ace pitcher and the star catcher both hung their heads.
"I called it. I waited for someone else to take charge. That's not the way to play baseball. It was totally my error," Wainwright said.
Ortiz, who hit a tying grand slam at Fenway in the AL championship series win over Detroit, sent a long drive to right-center. Beltran, playing in his first World Series, braced himself with one hand on the low wall in front of the bullpen and reached over with his glove to make the catch.
"At least I got an RBI and we were up four and got the momentum," Ortiz said.
Beltran hurt himself on the play and left in the third inning.
Ortiz homered in the seventh and the Red Sox got another run in the eighth on a sacrifice fly by 21-year-old rookie Xander Bogaerts.
The Red Sox almost made a terrific play to finish the game. With two outs in the ninth, Freese hit a sharp single and right fielder Shane Victorino nearly threw him out at first base.
NOTES: Lester has pitched 13 1-3 scoreless innings in two Series starts. He closed out a 2007 sweep over Colorado. ... The Red Sox won their fifth straight World Series opener since losing Game 1 to St. Louis in 1967. ... Red Sox Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski threw out the first ball. ... The team that won the Series opener has taken the title in 14 of the past 16 years.
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- Mike Napoli
- Adam Wainwright
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- Carlos Beltran
- Jon Lester
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বুধবার, ২৩ অক্টোবর, ২০১৩
First-ever Information Systems Job Index shows healthy market for college students
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Brandon Lausch
blausch@temple.edu
215-204-4115
Temple University
Despite a 7.2 percent national unemployment rate, the job market is a healthy one for college students majoring in information systems, with nearly three quarters of students receiving at least one job offer, according to the nationwide IS Job Index by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and Temple University's Fox School of Business. The study compiled data from more than 1,200 students and from 48 universities across the United States.
According to the IS Job Index, released in October, 61 percent of information systems graduates received one job offer, while 23 percent received two and 9 percent received three. In 2012, there were an estimated 2.9 million jobs in the United States related to information systems.
"Information systems professionals lead IT in major corporations, but the IS labor market is 'hidden' because it is mixed with computer scientists and call center operators in national statistics," said Munir Mandviwalla, associate professor and chair of the Department of Management Information Systems at the Fox School of Business and executive director of Temple's Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT). "The IS Job Index is the first-ever nationwide study to focus on profiling the IT worker of the future."
Top findings include:
- The IS job market is healthy, with placement levels of 74 percent overall and 78 percent upon graduation.
- Bachelor's IS students have an average salary of $57,212 while master's IS students average $65,394 a year.
- 76 percent of IS graduates are satisfied with their jobs, and the same percentage are confident they will perform well in those jobs. Seventy-three percent found jobs related to their chosen degree.
- Information technology, financial services, and business services/consulting are the top industries for IS jobs.
- The most common job classification is systems analyst, at 35 percent for bachelor's students and 28 percent for master's students.
- Access to career services centers is the most important factor for getting a job. Also, IS students value faculty support more than central university support.
- IS students are 68 percent male, 55 percent white and 28 percent Asian.
The study found that students who spend more hours overall searching for a job have a higher chance of receiving an offer. When examining job-search activities, researchers found that the most successful students use multiple techniques, including looking for jobs on job boards, talking to friends and contacts, formally applying for jobs, directly contacting employers, and interviewing.
Students also apply for multiple jobs. Bachelor's students, on average, apply for 11 jobs, and master's students average 16 job applications.
Despite the amount of opportunity for IS students, women and minorities are still underrepresented in the field. The study shows that more than half of IS students are white men.
The AIS-Temple Fox School 2013 IS Job Index Report is a five-year ongoing project that will provide prospective and current students, guidance counselors, academics and managers with an analysis of the state of the industry.
Future reports are expected to include expanded data collection with more schools, longitudinal analysis, global focus and prioritized factors that top students seek in employers.
###
AIS is the world's premier professional association for information systems. The Fox School of Business research team included Mandviwalla, Crystal M. Harold, assistant professor of human resource management and CIGNA research fellow; Paul A. Pavlou, Milton F. Stauffer professor of information technology and strategy; and Tony Petrucci, assistant professor of human resource management. For more information, including a link to the full report, visit http://ibit.temple.edu/isjobindex/
[
Share]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Brandon Lausch
blausch@temple.edu
215-204-4115
Temple University
Despite a 7.2 percent national unemployment rate, the job market is a healthy one for college students majoring in information systems, with nearly three quarters of students receiving at least one job offer, according to the nationwide IS Job Index by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and Temple University's Fox School of Business. The study compiled data from more than 1,200 students and from 48 universities across the United States.
According to the IS Job Index, released in October, 61 percent of information systems graduates received one job offer, while 23 percent received two and 9 percent received three. In 2012, there were an estimated 2.9 million jobs in the United States related to information systems.
"Information systems professionals lead IT in major corporations, but the IS labor market is 'hidden' because it is mixed with computer scientists and call center operators in national statistics," said Munir Mandviwalla, associate professor and chair of the Department of Management Information Systems at the Fox School of Business and executive director of Temple's Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT). "The IS Job Index is the first-ever nationwide study to focus on profiling the IT worker of the future."
Top findings include:
- The IS job market is healthy, with placement levels of 74 percent overall and 78 percent upon graduation.
- Bachelor's IS students have an average salary of $57,212 while master's IS students average $65,394 a year.
- 76 percent of IS graduates are satisfied with their jobs, and the same percentage are confident they will perform well in those jobs. Seventy-three percent found jobs related to their chosen degree.
- Information technology, financial services, and business services/consulting are the top industries for IS jobs.
- The most common job classification is systems analyst, at 35 percent for bachelor's students and 28 percent for master's students.
- Access to career services centers is the most important factor for getting a job. Also, IS students value faculty support more than central university support.
- IS students are 68 percent male, 55 percent white and 28 percent Asian.
The study found that students who spend more hours overall searching for a job have a higher chance of receiving an offer. When examining job-search activities, researchers found that the most successful students use multiple techniques, including looking for jobs on job boards, talking to friends and contacts, formally applying for jobs, directly contacting employers, and interviewing.
Students also apply for multiple jobs. Bachelor's students, on average, apply for 11 jobs, and master's students average 16 job applications.
Despite the amount of opportunity for IS students, women and minorities are still underrepresented in the field. The study shows that more than half of IS students are white men.
The AIS-Temple Fox School 2013 IS Job Index Report is a five-year ongoing project that will provide prospective and current students, guidance counselors, academics and managers with an analysis of the state of the industry.
Future reports are expected to include expanded data collection with more schools, longitudinal analysis, global focus and prioritized factors that top students seek in employers.
###
AIS is the world's premier professional association for information systems. The Fox School of Business research team included Mandviwalla, Crystal M. Harold, assistant professor of human resource management and CIGNA research fellow; Paul A. Pavlou, Milton F. Stauffer professor of information technology and strategy; and Tony Petrucci, assistant professor of human resource management. For more information, including a link to the full report, visit http://ibit.temple.edu/isjobindex/
[
Share]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/tu-fis102313.php
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UAlberta medical researchers discover potential new treatment for colitis
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Raquel Maurier
rmaurier@ualberta.ca
780-492-5986
University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
A drug currently on the market to treat leukemia reversed symptoms of colitis in lab tests, according to recently published findings by medical researchers with the University of Alberta.
Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Shairaz Baksh published his team's discovery in the peer-reviewed journal, PLOS ONE.
His team discovered that a tumour-suppressor gene can also play an important role in the development of colitis. When this gene quits working or is missing, the inflammation process is triggered and the body loses its ability to repair damaged colon tissue. This leads to severe discomfort and poor recovery following bouts of inflammation. Persistent inflammation is prevalent in inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis).
Baksh and his team wondered if they could interfere with the inflammation process and encourage the body to repair the damaged tissue, so the disease would be less severe and patients could recover more quickly from any flare-ups. The team used a leukemia drug (imatinib/gleevec) that has been on the market for years to treat normal mice and mice that were missing the tumour-suppressor gene.
"The treatment reversed the symptoms of colitis," says Baksh. "We are on the cusp of a new treatment for this condition that affects 150,000 Canadians. We are pretty excited about the impact of this finding.
"We are trying to inhibit colitis by preventing the inflammation that is causing the damage. More importantly, by controlling or preventing the inflammation, we can reduce the likelihood that patients with ulcerative colitis develop colorectal cancer later in life. About half of these patients develop this type of cancer due to chronic inflammation.
"Our findings also suggest we may have identified novel biomarkers for the appearance and progression of inflammatory bowel disease."
His team is continuing its work in this area and has discovered that other drugs currently on the market have the same effect in reducing the symptoms of colitis in mice. He hopes to publish the new drug study results very soon, and suspects a new treatment for colitis could be a combination of two to three drugs already on the market.
A combination drug therapy would need to undergo further testing in the lab, but could go to clinical trials in about five years since the medications are already approved.
About 0.5 per cent of Canadians have colitis. The incidence is higher in Alberta than in other provinces and studies are currently underway to identify the hot spots in the province. Genetics, diet and environment each play an important role in the development of the disease. Symptoms include weight loss, rectal bleeding and weight loss. Patients with the condition have ulcerated and inflamed colons, which are shorter than average and cause a great deal of discomfort.
Baksh examines the link between inflammation and cancer. About one-third of cancers start due to chronic inflammation, he says. For example, about 40 to 50 per cent of patients with ulcerative colitis (a form of inflammatory bowel disease) later develop colorectal cancer; those with chronic bronchitis are prone to developing lung cancer; and acute pancreatitis often leads to pancreatic cancer. Hence, there is a great need to understand how inflammation is a "pre-condition" for cancer, says Baksh.
Baksh is a researcher in the Department of Pediatrics, the Department of Biochemistry and the Division of Experimental Oncology.
His research was funded by Alberta Innovates Health Solutions, the Hair Massacure and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Tammy MacDonald, who founded the Hair Massacure fundraiser and helped fund this research, spoke of a young family member's diagnosis with leukemia in 2000 - a diagnosis that would have been a death sentence at one time.
"Today, due to ongoing research and clinical trials, the odds of beating many cancers have significantly increased. Still, we have not found a cure. We felt that continuing the journey of research will inevitably lead us there.
"Dr. Baksh is our chosen researcher. We are extremely thankful for his expertise, passion and accountability. Dr. Baksh's discovery and interest in colitis and inflammatory diseases, as it relates to pre-cancers, adds a more thorough approach to seeking proactive treatments that could prevent cancer."
###
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Oct-2013
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ShareContact: Raquel Maurier
rmaurier@ualberta.ca
780-492-5986
University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
A drug currently on the market to treat leukemia reversed symptoms of colitis in lab tests, according to recently published findings by medical researchers with the University of Alberta.
Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Shairaz Baksh published his team's discovery in the peer-reviewed journal, PLOS ONE.
His team discovered that a tumour-suppressor gene can also play an important role in the development of colitis. When this gene quits working or is missing, the inflammation process is triggered and the body loses its ability to repair damaged colon tissue. This leads to severe discomfort and poor recovery following bouts of inflammation. Persistent inflammation is prevalent in inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis).
Baksh and his team wondered if they could interfere with the inflammation process and encourage the body to repair the damaged tissue, so the disease would be less severe and patients could recover more quickly from any flare-ups. The team used a leukemia drug (imatinib/gleevec) that has been on the market for years to treat normal mice and mice that were missing the tumour-suppressor gene.
"The treatment reversed the symptoms of colitis," says Baksh. "We are on the cusp of a new treatment for this condition that affects 150,000 Canadians. We are pretty excited about the impact of this finding.
"We are trying to inhibit colitis by preventing the inflammation that is causing the damage. More importantly, by controlling or preventing the inflammation, we can reduce the likelihood that patients with ulcerative colitis develop colorectal cancer later in life. About half of these patients develop this type of cancer due to chronic inflammation.
"Our findings also suggest we may have identified novel biomarkers for the appearance and progression of inflammatory bowel disease."
His team is continuing its work in this area and has discovered that other drugs currently on the market have the same effect in reducing the symptoms of colitis in mice. He hopes to publish the new drug study results very soon, and suspects a new treatment for colitis could be a combination of two to three drugs already on the market.
A combination drug therapy would need to undergo further testing in the lab, but could go to clinical trials in about five years since the medications are already approved.
About 0.5 per cent of Canadians have colitis. The incidence is higher in Alberta than in other provinces and studies are currently underway to identify the hot spots in the province. Genetics, diet and environment each play an important role in the development of the disease. Symptoms include weight loss, rectal bleeding and weight loss. Patients with the condition have ulcerated and inflamed colons, which are shorter than average and cause a great deal of discomfort.
Baksh examines the link between inflammation and cancer. About one-third of cancers start due to chronic inflammation, he says. For example, about 40 to 50 per cent of patients with ulcerative colitis (a form of inflammatory bowel disease) later develop colorectal cancer; those with chronic bronchitis are prone to developing lung cancer; and acute pancreatitis often leads to pancreatic cancer. Hence, there is a great need to understand how inflammation is a "pre-condition" for cancer, says Baksh.
Baksh is a researcher in the Department of Pediatrics, the Department of Biochemistry and the Division of Experimental Oncology.
His research was funded by Alberta Innovates Health Solutions, the Hair Massacure and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Tammy MacDonald, who founded the Hair Massacure fundraiser and helped fund this research, spoke of a young family member's diagnosis with leukemia in 2000 - a diagnosis that would have been a death sentence at one time.
"Today, due to ongoing research and clinical trials, the odds of beating many cancers have significantly increased. Still, we have not found a cure. We felt that continuing the journey of research will inevitably lead us there.
"Dr. Baksh is our chosen researcher. We are extremely thankful for his expertise, passion and accountability. Dr. Baksh's discovery and interest in colitis and inflammatory diseases, as it relates to pre-cancers, adds a more thorough approach to seeking proactive treatments that could prevent cancer."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/uoaf-umr102213.php
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Researchers propose social network modeling to fight hospital infections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
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ShareContact: Sean Barnes
sbarnes@rhsmith.umd.edu
301-405-9679
University of Maryland
COLLEGE PARK, Md. Two researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business have teamed up with a researcher at American University to develop a framework to help prevent costly and deadly infections acquired by hospitalized patients. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), these transmissions strike one out of every 20 inpatients, drain billions of dollars from the national health care system and cause tens of thousands of deaths annually.
The research of Sean Barnes, Smith School assistant professor of operations management; Bruce Golden, the Smith School's France-Merrick Chair in Management Science; and Edward Wasil of American's Kogod School of Business, utilized computer models that simulate the interactions between patients and health care workers to determine if these interactions are a source for spreading multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs). Their study shows a correlation of a "sparse, social network structure" with low infection transmission rates.
This study comes in advance of HHS' 2015 launch and enforcement of a new initiative that penalizes hospitals at an estimated average rate of $208,642 for violating specific requirements for infection control. In response, the study's authors have introduced a conceptual framework for hospitals to model their social networks to predict and minimize the spread of bacterial infections that often are resistant to antibiotic treatments.
The authors manipulated and tracked the dynamics of the social network in a mid-Atlantic hospital's intensive care unit. They focused on interactions between patients and health care workers primarily nurses and the multiple competing factors that can affect transmission.
"The basic reality is that healthcare workers frequently cover for one another due to meetings, breaks and sick leave," said Barnes. "These factors, along with the operating health care-worker-to-patient ratios and patient lengths of stay, can significantly affect transmission in an ICU But they also can be better controlled."
The next step is to enable hospitals to adapt this framework, which is based on maximizing staff-to-patient ratio to ensure fewer nurses and physicians come in contact with each patient, especially high-risk patients.
"The health care industry's electronic records movement could soon generate data that captures the structure of patient-healthcare worker interaction in addition to multiple competing, related factors that can affect MDRO transmission," said Barnes.
The study, "Exploring the Effects of Network Structure and Healthcare Worker Behavior on the Transmission of Hospital-Acquired Infections," appears in a recent issue of the peer-reviewed IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. The study was partially funded by the Robert H. Smith School of Business Center for Health Information and Decision Systems.
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A full copy of the study is available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19488300.2012.736120?journalCode=uhse20#.UmV9WPmsjlN
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Sean Barnes
sbarnes@rhsmith.umd.edu
301-405-9679
University of Maryland
COLLEGE PARK, Md. Two researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business have teamed up with a researcher at American University to develop a framework to help prevent costly and deadly infections acquired by hospitalized patients. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), these transmissions strike one out of every 20 inpatients, drain billions of dollars from the national health care system and cause tens of thousands of deaths annually.
The research of Sean Barnes, Smith School assistant professor of operations management; Bruce Golden, the Smith School's France-Merrick Chair in Management Science; and Edward Wasil of American's Kogod School of Business, utilized computer models that simulate the interactions between patients and health care workers to determine if these interactions are a source for spreading multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs). Their study shows a correlation of a "sparse, social network structure" with low infection transmission rates.
This study comes in advance of HHS' 2015 launch and enforcement of a new initiative that penalizes hospitals at an estimated average rate of $208,642 for violating specific requirements for infection control. In response, the study's authors have introduced a conceptual framework for hospitals to model their social networks to predict and minimize the spread of bacterial infections that often are resistant to antibiotic treatments.
The authors manipulated and tracked the dynamics of the social network in a mid-Atlantic hospital's intensive care unit. They focused on interactions between patients and health care workers primarily nurses and the multiple competing factors that can affect transmission.
"The basic reality is that healthcare workers frequently cover for one another due to meetings, breaks and sick leave," said Barnes. "These factors, along with the operating health care-worker-to-patient ratios and patient lengths of stay, can significantly affect transmission in an ICU But they also can be better controlled."
The next step is to enable hospitals to adapt this framework, which is based on maximizing staff-to-patient ratio to ensure fewer nurses and physicians come in contact with each patient, especially high-risk patients.
"The health care industry's electronic records movement could soon generate data that captures the structure of patient-healthcare worker interaction in addition to multiple competing, related factors that can affect MDRO transmission," said Barnes.
The study, "Exploring the Effects of Network Structure and Healthcare Worker Behavior on the Transmission of Hospital-Acquired Infections," appears in a recent issue of the peer-reviewed IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. The study was partially funded by the Robert H. Smith School of Business Center for Health Information and Decision Systems.
###
A full copy of the study is available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19488300.2012.736120?journalCode=uhse20#.UmV9WPmsjlN
[
Share]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/uom-rps102213.php
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13 jailed Syrian women released
In this photo, which AP obtained from Syrian official news agency SANA and which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, President Bashar Assad, right, gestures as he speaks during an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Syria’s president said Monday that the factors that would allow a landmark conference aimed at ending the country’s civil war do not yet exist, throwing further doubt on international efforts to hold peace talks that have already been repeatedly delayed. (AP Photo/SANA)
In this photo, which AP obtained from Syrian official news agency SANA and which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, President Bashar Assad, right, gestures as he speaks during an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Syria’s president said Monday that the factors that would allow a landmark conference aimed at ending the country’s civil war do not yet exist, throwing further doubt on international efforts to hold peace talks that have already been repeatedly delayed. (AP Photo/SANA)
In this photo, which AP obtained from Syrian official news agency SANA and which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, President Bashar Assad gestures as he speaks during an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Syria’s president said Monday that the factors that would allow a landmark conference aimed at ending the country’s civil war do not yet exist, throwing further doubt on international efforts to hold peace talks that have already been repeatedly delayed. (AP Photo/SANA)
Abbas Hammoud, center, one of the nine released Lebanese Shiite pilgrims who were kidnapped by a rebel faction in northern Syria in May 2012, center, kisses his wife upon his arrival at Rafik Hariri international airport, in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013. Two Turkish pilots held hostage in Lebanon and nine Lebanese pilgrims abducted in Syria returned home Saturday night, part of an ambitious three-way deal cutting across the Syrian civil war.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
This image made from video made from Syrian state television shows the aftermath of a truck bomb attack in Hama, Syria, Oct. 20, 2013. Syria's state media and activists say the suicide truck bomb attack on a government checkpoint on the edge of the central city left more than two dozen people dead. The state news agency SANA said Syrian rebels drove the truck laden with over a ton of explosives into the post at the eastern entrance of the city on Sunday. (AP Photo/Syrian State television via AP video)
BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government has released 13 jailed women, an official and an activist group said on Wednesday — a move that may be part of an ambitious regional prisoner exchange.
Meanwhile, al-Qaida-linked rebels strengthened their hold on an ancient Christian town north of Damascus, activists said.
In The Hague, the organization tasked with destroying Syria's chemical weapons program and its arsenal said they had visited more than three-quarters of the sites declared by the government. The group said it expected to meet a Nov. 1 deadline to make declared chemical weapons production facilities inoperable.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the women were released Tuesday morning from the headquarters of the Damascus provincial government, but said they hadn't been able to contact them.
The Observatory relies on a network of activists on the ground for its information.
The women may have been freed as part of a three-way exchange that began on Oct. 18. It saw Syrian rebels release nine Lebanese men held for a year and a half. Lebanese gunmen simultaneously released two Turkish pilots held since August.
Lebanese officials had said a number of imprisoned Syrian women were meant to be let go to meet the demands of the Syrian rebels. They were not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
It's unclear how many women are held by Syria's government, nor how usual it is for 13 to be released simultaneously. A Syrian government official confirmed the women were freed, but would not provide further details. He spoke anonymously, because he wasn't authorized to talk to media.
The deal underscored how far Syria's civil war, now in its third year, has spilled across the greater Middle East. It appeared to represent one of the more ambitious negotiated settlements to come out of the war, in which the rival factions remain largely opposed to any bartered peace.
Fighting continued in the Christian town of Sadad and desperate residents tried to flee, as hard-line Muslim rebels clashed with soldiers and gunmen loyal to the government of President Bashar Assad.
The Observatory said fighters from the two al-Qaida-linked groups, the Jabhat al-Nusra or Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, took a checkpoint that gave them control of the western part of the town. They also took control of the road leading to Damascus. Residents were fleeing in the opposite direction, to the central city of Homs some 56 kilometers (35 miles) away.
Residents told the group that five people were killed by snipers. The residents believed the snipers were rebels.
Clashes have been ongoing in Sadad for the past three days. The fighters seem to have appears to have targeted Sadad because of its strategic location near the main highway north of Damascus, rather than because it is Christian. But hard-liners among the rebels are hostile to Syria's Christian minority, which fears the radicals and tends to favor Assad. Other al-Qaida-linked fighters have damaged and desecrated churches in areas they have seized.
Also Wednesday, a spokesman for international inspectors said they had visited 18 out of 23 chemical weapons sites declared by Syria, racing to meet tight deadlines set by the U.N. to destroy the country's chemical weapons arsenal and their ability to produce the weapons.
Three teams of inspectors had carried out "functional destruction activities" at almost all the sites, said spokesman Michael Luhan of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He briefed reporters at the OPCW's headquarters in The Hague.
Initial site visits and preliminary destruction activities are expected to be completed by Nov. 1. Luhan said they expected that by that date, they will have rendered "inoperable" Syria's declared chemical weapons production facilities and machinery for mixing chemicals and filling munitions.
The three teams of inspectors had "good access" to sites so far, and the Syrian government was cooperating, said Luhan.
He wouldn't comment on how inspectors were to reach sites under rebel control.
The U.N. Security Council has tasked the OPCW with a tight deadline to Syria's chemical capabilities, a matter complicated by the country's three-year raging civil war.
By Oct. 27, Syria must submit a plan for the destruction of its stockpile. By Nov. 1, the inspectors must complete verification of the inventory and render production, mixing and filling facilities unusable. By Nov. 15, they must adopt a plan for destroying the stockpile, aiming for completion by mid-2014.
Luhan said that as the first phase of the operation was winding down by the end of October, the number of inspectors would be temporarily down to 15 next week.
They currently have 27 inspectors in Syria and one more in Lebanon assisting logistics.
The toll of the Syrian war has been crushing. Over 100,000 people have been killed, and almost a third of the population has fled its homes to escape violence or the resulting economic hardships.
Even fleeing is no guarantee of safety. The Observatory reported Wednesday that a Syrian woman trying to escape to neighboring Jordan was raped and killed, along with her daughters aged one and three, allegedly by the man who was supposed to take her across the border. The Observatory said the incident occurred in the Zizon valley on the Jordanian-Syria border on Monday.
The man also stole all her cash: $87. Syrian residents found the bodies days later. The Observatory said Syrian rebels captured and killed a suspect who they said confessed to the crime.
_________
With additional reporting by Mick Corder in The Hague.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-23-Syria/id-9d9c1ef5d8eb4c0e80f71ee6c205dbcfSimilar Articles: january jones freedom tower chargers jadeveon clowney Jake Pavelka
Inside the NYC Super-Factory Building America's Tallest Prefab Tower
In a corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on a factory floor that resembles an oversized assembly line, workers are building entire apartments in days. Most New Yorkers might not realize it, but the tallest prefab building in the country—and maybe the world—is currently taking shape not far from where they live. Gizmodo recently got a chance to visit the space and watch it come together.
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Military exercise sparked big Australian wildfire
SYDNEY (AP) — A military training exercise ignited the largest of the wildfires that have ravaged Australia's most populous state in the past week, investigators said Wednesday.
More than 100 fires have killed one man and destroyed more than 200 homes in New South Wales state since Thursday.
Fire investigators found that a massive fire near the city of Lithgow, west of Sydney, began Oct. 16 at a nearby Defense Department training area, and that the blaze "was started as a result of live ordnance exercises" at the army range, the Rural Fire Service said in a statement.
The fire has burned 47,000 hectares (180 square miles) and destroyed several houses, but no injuries or deaths have been reported in the blaze. It was downgraded from the highest emergency category on Wednesday.
The Defense Department declined to comment on the investigators' findings, but had earlier confirmed that an explosive ordnance training exercise was conducted Oct. 16. The Defense Department was also investigating any link between the exercise and the fire.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/military-exercise-sparked-big-australian-wildfire-091327069.htmlCategory: oakland raiders revenge Scott Eastwood CDOT usher
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