A majority of Oracle shareholders have once again voted against the company's executive pay practices, including for CEO Larry Ellison.
Thursday's vote at Oracle's annual shareholder meeting is nonbinding, and follows complaints from some large shareholders and their representatives who say Ellison is overpaid compared to his peers.
Ellison is paid $1 in salary, receiving the rest of his pay in stock options. In Oracle's past fiscal year, that totaled $76.9 million. Ellison declined to receive a bonus. Other top Oracle executives such as co-President Mark Hurd also receive a lot of stock options.
Ellison, who is one of the world's richest people, controls about one-fourth of Oracle's shares.
Shareholders voted against Oracle's executive pay practices at last year's meeting as well.
Oracle has defended its policy on the grounds that the stock options aren't worth anything unless Oracle's share price rises, which is good for both executives such as Ellison and every other Oracle shareholder.
Earlier this month, Oracle secretary and general counsel Dorian Daley described Ellison as the company's "most critical strategic visionary" and characterized his pay as a bargain compared to the benefits Oracle receives.
Ellison took questions from shareholders in attendance after the meeting's formal agenda concluded and the topics didn't always center on enterprise technology.
One referred to a near "disaster" the city of New York would have experienced had Eliot Spitzer been elected comptroller, and asked Ellison whether Oracle could "intervene financially" in New York elections.
"We live in a democracy, and the people pick their leaders, and we do that all the time," Ellison said. "If we're not happy with that we can pick someone else. I don't think Oracle should engage in political activity specifically trying to influence the New York City and New York state elections. We should focus on things like building fast computers and better software."
Another shareholder questioned why Oracle has two presidents in Hurd and Safra Catz.
"I just figured two's better than one," Ellison said to laughter. "Seriously, it's a large company. We have a separation of responsibilities." Hurd focuses on sales and support while Catz handles operational matters, he said. "I think they've both done outstanding jobs in their respective areas of expertise," Ellison added. "Either one of them could go out and get a CEO's job tomorrow."
A third questioner complained that she had to call Oracle's investor relations office three times to find out when the shareholder meeting was supposed to occur.
"We love people to come to our annual meeting," Ellison said by way of apology. "We even have cookies." Oracle will make sure information about the meeting is posted to its website, he added.
Ellison steered clear of saying anything controversial when asked about Oracle's involvement with the troubled Healthcare.gov website.
"As an information technology company we are doing everything we can to make it a highly performant, highly reliable [system]," he said. "I will refrain from editorial comments about what has happened there. I think most of us want our government to operate efficiently."
But Ellison revealed which rivals Oracle watches most closely. IBM, EMC, SAP, and Salesforce.com "are four competitors we spend a lot of time thinking about," he said.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com
Going to bat for his buddy, Justin Bieber grabbed some spray paint and plastered a message on Chris Brown's behalf while out in Bogota, Columbia on Wednesday evening (October 30).
The “One Less Lonely Girl” singer wrote “Free Breezy” on a graffiti wall, referring to the legal woes plaguing Mr. Brown after his assault charges earlier this month.
Chris was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault after he got into a fight in Washington DC, and upon his release he checked into rehab for anger issues.
Of course, Justin also took the opportunity to spray paint a marijuana leaf as well as a tribute to Pac, his deceased hamster.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as contraception, divorce and gay couples.
The survey asks how priests minister to same-sex couples and their children — and to men and women living together outside of marriage.
The poll was sent in mid-October to every national bishops conference with instructions to get the widest possible response. The information is for a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.
The National Catholic Reporter was first to report the survey Thursday. A U.S. bishops' spokeswoman told The Associated Press the document is authentic and each bishop will decide how to get input.
In England, bishops posted the survey online asking church members to participate.
Los Angeles (AFP) - US and Mexican authorities have unearthed another sophisticated "supertunnel" used to smuggle drugs beneath their common border, the third since 2011, officials said Thursday.
Zig-zagging for a third of a mile beneath the border between San Diego and Tijuana, the newly-constructed tunnel was equipped with an electric-powered rail system to carry the drugs, as well as ventilation.
For the first time, agents seized cocaine intended to be smuggled through the tunnel as well as more than eight tons of marijuana, indicating that Mexican drug cartels are getting increasingly "desperate," they said.
"These cartels are foolish to think they're shoveling under the radar," said US Attorney for Southern California Laura Duffy at a press conference outside the San Diego warehouse where the US end of the tunnel was found Wednesday.
Investigators released video footage of the tunnel, which they stressed was uncovered before it had been been used.
In a message to drug smugglers including notably Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Duffy vowed: "If you continue to build and attempt to use these tunnels, we are determined to make this a big waste of your dirty money."
Three people were arrested and authorities seized the huge marijuana haul as well as 325 pounds of cocaine, which is usually transported in smaller quantities and does not come through tunnels.
"Their traditional routes are failing at this point. They're very desperate. They'll do anything they can to get into the US," said Bill Sherman, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s San Diego office.
As with two other "supertunnels" discovered in 2011, agents pounced before it had even become operational. "They did not move one gram of narcotics thru that tunnel," said Sherman.
Law enforcement authorities were increasingly seeing attempts to bring narcotics including cocaine and methamphetamines over the border through tunnels, or micro-light aircraft.
"Those are acts of desperation," he said.
The tunnel was built at an average depth of 35 feet, and was 4 feet high by 3 feet wide, said Derek Benner of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Construction likely took a year or more, officials said, adding that it was the work of "engineers and architects." It included hydraulically-controlled steel doors.
Of the three arrested, two were detained in connection with the cocaine seized, and one, a Mexican national, was held over the marijuana haul. All face a maximum of 10 years to life in jail, officials said.
In Tijuana, a Mexican security source said the tunnel was accessed at the southern end by a metal stairway down to a depth of 20 meters, from a building about 80 meters from the border fence.
Discoveries of such underground passageways along the US-Mexico border are not uncommon and authorities say they are used by organized crime groups to traffick drugs and people into the United States.
The tunnel was the eighth large scale such structure discovered since 2006, and the fifth intercepted since 2010.
Over 77,000 people have died in drug-linked violence since 2006, when troops were deployed to battle drug cartels, including under ex president Felipe Calderon and his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office last year.
NEW YORK (AP) — The sunburst Fender Stratocaster that a young Bob Dylan played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he famously went electric, perhaps the most historic instrument in rock 'n' roll, is coming up for auction, where it could bring as much as half a million dollars.
Though now viewed as changing American music forever, Dylan's three-song electric set at the Rhode Island festival that marked his move from acoustic folk to electric rock 'n' roll was met by boos from folk purists in the crowd who viewed him as a traitor. He returned for an acoustic encore with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
Now the guitar is being offered for sale Dec. 6, Christie's said. Five lots of hand- and typewritten lyric fragments found inside the guitar case — early versions of some of Dylan's legendary songs — also are being sold. The lyrics have a pre-sale estimate ranging from $3,000 to $30,000.
With a classic sunburst finish and original flat-wound strings, the guitar has been in the possession of a New Jersey family for nearly 50 years. Dylan left it on a private plane piloted by the owner's late father, Vic Quinto, who worked for Dylan's manager.
His daughter, Dawn Peterson, of Morris County, N.J., has said her father asked the management company what to do with the guitar but nobody ever got back to him.
Last year, she took it to the PBS show "History Detectives" to try to have it authenticated. The program enlisted the expertise of Andy Babiuk, a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and owner of an upstate New York vintage instrument shop, and Jeff Gold, a Dylan memorabilia expert. Both men, who appeared on the episode, unequivocally declared the artifacts belonged to Dylan.
Babiuk took the instrument apart and also compared it to close-up color photos of the guitar taken at the 1965 festival.
"I was able to match the wood grain on the body of the guitar ... and the unique grain of the rosewood fingerboard. Wood grains are like fingerprints, no two are exactly alike," Babiuk said in an interview. "Based on the sum of the evidence, I was able to identify that this guitar was the one that Bob Dylan had played in Newport."
Dylan's attorney and his publicist did not respond to email and phone requests for comment. Dylan and Peterson, who declined to be interviewed, recently settled a legal dispute over the items.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed but allowed Peterson to sell the guitar and lyrics, according to Rolling Stone, which wrote in July about Peterson's quest to authenticate the guitar.
"Representatives for Bob Dylan do not contest the sale of the guitar, and are aware of Christie's plan to bring it to auction," a statement issued through Christie's said.
Dylan has generally looked upon his instruments to convey his art, akin to a carpenter's hammer, Howard Kramer, curatorial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said last year. "I don't think he's dwelled on a guitar he hasn't played for 47 years," he said. "If he cared about it, he would have done something about it."
Festival founder George Wein told the AP that when Dylan finished playing, Wein was backstage and told him to go back out and play an acoustic number because that's what people expected. Dylan said he didn't want to do it and said he couldn't because he only had the electric guitar. Wein called out for a loaner backstage and about 20 musicians raised their acoustic guitars to offer them.
The lyrics for sale include "In the Darkness of Your Room," an early draft of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" from Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" album, and three songs from the record's 1965 recording session that were not released until the 1980s: "Medicine Sunday" (the draft is titled "Midnight Train"), "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover."
Dylan's "going electric changed the structure of folk music," the 88-year-old Wein said. "The minute Dylan went electric, all these young people said, 'Bobby's going electric, we're going electric, too.'"
___
Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Lefties more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia: Yale study
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Karen N. Peart karen.peart@yale.edu 203-432-1326 Yale University
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open.
About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, "a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed."
"In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed," said Webb. "Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways."
Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. "Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained," said Webb.
What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked "What hand do you write with?"
"This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way," said Webb. "Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support."
###
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor.
Citation:Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503166.full.pdf+html
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Lefties more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia: Yale study
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Karen N. Peart karen.peart@yale.edu 203-432-1326 Yale University
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open.
About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, "a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed."
"In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed," said Webb. "Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways."
Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. "Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained," said Webb.
What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked "What hand do you write with?"
"This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way," said Webb. "Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support."
###
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor.
Citation:Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503166.full.pdf+html
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
With MetroPCS transitioning to GSM smartphones that run on T-Mobile's network, you'd expect the two carriers to have near-identical offerings, but MetroPCS's larger roster of affordable smartphones is more robust. The Huawei Vitria ($129 up front) is a solid Android smartphone, and the least expensive MetroPCS phone with LTE. It doesn't compete with the carrier's flagship Android smartphone (and our Editors' Choice), the Samsung Galaxy S4, though it isn't meant to. The Vitria's display could be a little better, the camera could be faster, and it could have a little more storage, but it's an inexpensive device that performs well enough in its price class.
Design and Display For such a small device the Vitria is pretty hefty. It measures 4.99 by 2.51 by 0.46 (HWD) inches and weighs 4.94 ounces, 0.94 ounces more than the LG Optimus F3, another 4-inch smartphone, now available on MetroPCS.
The Vitria's enclosure is smooth, with rounded corners, and the bottom comes to a very slight point. It's pretty plain looking, and doesn't stand out among the crowd of slimmer smartphones. On the back is the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash, which is flush with the soft touch exterior. Remove the matte black plastic back and you'll gain access to the 1750mAh battery, SIM card, and microSD card slot. Pulling the battery lets you remove the SIM card; the microSD card is accessible without powering down your phone, and located right next to the camera lens.
On the left side is the micro USB port for charging and connecting to a PC. It's an awkward placement when using the phone in landscape mode. On the other side is a faux-metal plastic volume rocker. The same plastic wraps around the edge of the phone, making it seem a little cheap, but still feel sturdy. On top is the Power button on the left and headphone jack on the right. Included with the Vitria is a small wall charger and a micro USB cable.
For this price you're not getting an HD screen. The Vitria has a 4-inch Gorilla Glass 2 LCD with 800 by 480 resolution. That's about 233 pixels per inch. Not bad, but not stellar either. Text and images aren't especially clear, but colors look vibrant. Viewing angles is adequate, but the display begins to wash out at more extreme angles. There's a set of Back, Home, and Menu buttons below the screen. Though it has a low-resolution display, typing on the on-screen keyboard is incredibly easy. The Vitria has Swype's keyboard installed at launch, making it a breeze to slide your finger over the letters you need and have the phone spell the right word for you, and eliminating the annoying smartphone hunt-and-peck typing.
Connectivity and Call Quality The Huawei Vitria is pretty well-connected for the price. Under the hood is Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi calling, A-GPS, and DLNA support for media streaming to the few and far between DLNA-capable devices.
The Vitria may be inexpensive, but it's one of the few sub-$150 phones with LTE. The next LTE-capable phone on MetroPCS is the $149 Optimus F3. It's running on T-Mobile's network, and as such doesn't support any of MetroPCS' CDMA bands. For $40 per month you get unlimited voice, texting, and data (with 500MB worth of LTE speeds). $50 gets you 2.5GB of high-speed data, and $60 gets you unlimited high-speed data.
Call quality on the phone was remarkably good, at least on my end. The other person's voice was clear and loud thanks to the earpiece. My voice came through more muddied and muffled than I would have liked. Noise cancellation was also an issue whenever a truck or car would pass by. The caller on the other end would hear every sound outside. My tests with a Jabra Stone 3 Bluetooth headset yielded the same results. The speakerphone was very quiet and barely audible in the streets of New York City.
The Vitria's 1750mAh cell was a boon during battery testing. The phone lasted a solid 9 hours and 23 minutes in our talk time test.
Hardware, OS, and Apps The Vitria contains a Snapdragon MSM8930 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM; old hardware, but fine for an entry-level smartphone. In Nenamark's graphical performance test, the Vitria scored 59 frames per second. It trounces its similarly priced competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, which scored a meager 38.6 frames. In the Taiji graphics test it beats the more expensive LG Optimus L9, with 42.8 versus LG's 13.6. When you remember it isn't pushing too many pixels, all that speed makes more sense. As a result, the Vitria is an affordable casual gaming machine, though it routinely runs out of space needed to download the games and apps without a microSD card. Our tests showed that a 64GB card was too large, but a 32GB one worked just fine. You're going to need that card, however, as the Vitria only has 1.72GB of available storage.
Huawei's Android 4.1.2 is carrying a lot more bloatware than I'd like. It's too gratuitous, even coming with a theming app that customizes the interface with new sets of icons that doesn't look as great as stock Android. A few of the apps are simply shortcuts to settings like mobile hotspots or visual voicemail, but with apps like Rhapsody ($5/month), MetroPCS Screen-It ($5/month) for screening calls, and Metro Block-It ($1/month) for blocking calls, all I see is my phone trying to nickel-and-dime me. In total there are 16 nonstandard apps, none of which are removable.
One interesting app is Profiles, which allows you to tie a group of settings together into a phone "profile" of sorts. For example, the preloaded Sleep profile has brightness at 7 percent, all data services off, and alarm sound at around 60 percent. It's useful for quickly turning on or off a group of related settings when in a movie, meeting, or other environment where you can't miss an alert.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions The Vitria played most video formats except any AVI files, whether encoded in MPEG-4, Xvid, or DivX. As for audio, it played everything except FLAC. Video looks passable, but darker scenes become muddled and contrast is quite low.
Many low-end Android phones have a built-in FM radio, and the Vitria is no exception; you'll need to plug in headphones, which double as an antenna; you can then toggle the sound output from headphone to phone speaker. You can't record what you're listening to, but bookmarking and searching for stations with two large arrow buttons is very convenient. As for purchasing content, the Vitria is equipped with the full suite of Play Store apps, including Play Movies & TV, and Play Music.
The 5-megapixel camera on the Vitria isn't a great shooter. Most of the images are washed out and noisy indoors, or overexposed outdoors. It takes almost a full second for the phone to capture each the photo and process it. Video recording is poor in low light; the frame rate drops dramatically and there's no image stabilization. Every step was a tremor to the phone and screwed with the autofocus while recording. The front-facing VGA camera snaps low-resolution photos.
The Huawei Vitria is in the sweet spot of price for performance on MetroPCS. If you're willing to spend a little more, $149 gets you the LG Optimus F3, a similar 4-inch touch-screen Android phone with LTE and better battery life. If you're on a shoestring budget you can save $20 with the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, though it lacks LTE and has a slightly smaller display. The Huawei Vitria doesn't have a great screen, but at under $150, and with 4G LTE, it's a solid value.
She’s been busy touring the world as of late, and Beyoncé Knowles just unveiled a teaser for her forthcoming DVD “Life is But a Dream.”
The “Independent Women” songstress sings her new song “God Made You Beautiful” on the trailer, a song she dedicated to her daughter Blue Ivy.
Beyonce croons, “When you were born/The angels sighed in delight/They never thought they'd see such a beautiful sight.”
Knowles’ ditty is a follow-up to husband Jay Z’s song “Glory,” also dedicated to Blue. He raps, “The most amazing feeling I feel, words can't describe what I'm feeling for real / Baby, I paint the sky blue, my greatest creation was you.”
Halloween: The day people think it's okay to dress in stereotypical garb.
adrigu/via Flickr
Halloween: The day people think it's okay to dress in stereotypical garb.
adrigu/via Flickr
Halloween is — uh, how do you say? — high season for writing about race and culture. The list of celebrities, stores and college freshmen sporting racist costumes — plus the inevitable backlash — means these stories practically write themselves.
Given the yearly onslaught of racist Halloween costumes, we sometimes joke here at Code Switch that Halloween is "Blackface Christmas."* (Joking aside, here's a brief history of blackface.) It has gotten bad enough that college administrators feel compelled to fire off preemptive no-blackface-or-racist-costumes emails to students.
This year it was the turn of Ohio University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Colorado-Boulder posted this note on their website, "If you are planning to celebrate Halloween by dressing up in a costume, consider the impact your costume decision may have on others in the CU community..."
Back in 2010, Burgwell Howard, then dean of students at Northwestern University, sent an email to students that outlined the definition of blackface. Howard asked, "Wearing a historical costume? If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies?" (Hampshire College has its own Halloween costume infographic, "Is Your Costume Racist?")
Mistakes don't have to be made.
The New York Times reports you can now turn to 'costume concierges' at Ricky's, a New York-based beauty chain who helpfully "steer light-skinned shoppers who want to go as dark-skinned characters to more 'creative cues' other than skin color."
Here's some seasonal badness from people who could have used the advice of a 'costume concierge:
People dressing as a bloody Trayvon Martin (and to add insult to injury, in blackface, nonetheless) and George Zimmerman (with a shirt emblazoned with 'NEIGHBORHOO WATCH' — we're guessing there's a D, though it's not clear if they ran out of consonants).
Folks wearing fake torn and bloody flight crew and captain outfits, a reference to the Asiana Airlines flight 214 crash in San Francisco that killed three and injured more than 100. The uniforms even have the infamous and mistaken names — Capt. Sum Ting Wong, Capt. Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk — on them.
The crew of Al Jolson wannabes at Milan's "Halloweek" costume party that had a "Disco Africa" theme.
Cartoonist Vishavjit Singh and Fiona Aboud's photography project showed portraits of Singh as Captain America, wearing his turban.
Courtesy of Vishavjit Singh and Fiona Aboud
Cartoonist Vishavjit Singh and Fiona Aboud's photography project showed portraits of Singh as Captain America, wearing his turban.
Courtesy of Vishavjit Singh and Fiona Aboud
The thing about the annual Halloween costume outrage cycle is that redemption is never far behind for those willing to acknowledge their own mistakes. After protests from an Asian-American civil rights group, Pottery Barn removed its kimono and sushi chef costumes and issued an apology: "We did not intend to offend anyone with our Halloween costumes and we apologize."
Sadly, you can set your watch to these Halloween WTF moments. What's the best way to curb them? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Maybe one day, the internet won't be overwhelmed with ill-considered Instagrams or Facebook photos on them. In the interim, we wish we could put lumps of coal in these people's blackface Christmas stockings, but they'd probably just smear it on their faces.
*('Blackface Christmas' is actually kind of a thing. In fact, it's a controversial issue in the Netherlands. 'Zwarte Piet' (Black Pete) is a tradition in which folks don blackface to dress as the 'helper' of Santa Clause. Zwarte Piet has its roots in slavery and the colonial era, but has since been spun to say his dark skin color comes from gathering soot as he shimmies down the chimney. In recent weeks, it's become an increasingly tense issue as the UN has started questioning its validity, sparking protests in the Netherlands.)
Two privacy-focused email providers have launched the Dark Mail Alliance, a project to engineer an email system with robust defenses against spying.
Silent Circle and Lavabit abruptly halted their encrypted email services in August, saying they could no longer guarantee email would remain private after court actions against Lavabit, reportedly an email provider for NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Their idea, presented at the Inbox Love email conference in Mountain View on Wednesday, is for an open system that could be widely implemented and which offers much stronger security and privacy. As envisioned, Dark Mail would shield both the content of an email and its "metadata," including "to" and "from" data, IP addresses and headers. The email providers hope a version will be ready by next year.
"The issue we are trying to deal with is that email was created 40 years ago," Jon Callas, CTO and founder of Silent Circle, in a phone interview. "It wasn't created to handle any of the security problems we have today."
Silent Circle, Lavabit and at least one VPN provider, CryptoSeal, shut down their services fearing a court order forcing the turnover of a private SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) key, which could be used to decrypt communications.
Lavabit was held in contempt of court for resisting an order to turn over its SSL key, which in theory allowed the government to decrypt not only Snowden's communications but also those of its 400,000 users. Ladar Levison, Lavabit's founder, is appealing.
Callas said Dark Mail is a collaboration with Levison. Rather than create a closed email service, they decided to design Dark Mail with open-source software components that could be used by any email provider.
"We need 1,000 Lavabits all around the world," he said.
Microsoft's David Dennis, lead principal program manager for the company's Outlook.com webmail portal, said Dark Mail is an "interesting proposal."
"We pay attention to any new innovations, protocols, standards and proposals impacting online communications," Dennis wrote in an email. "And we're always open to discussions with potential partners."
Representatives of Google and Yahoo who attended Inbox Love did not have an immediate comment.
Dark Mail will be crafted around XMPP, a Web messaging protocol known by its nickname Jabber, along with another encryption protocol created by Silent Circle called SCIMP (Silent Circle Instant Message Protocol), Callas said.
An adapter will be built that will enable Dark Mail within different email clients. "There's no reason why you couldn't modify Outlook and Exchange to do this," he said.
Did someone's foot get stuck on the accelerator? The worldwide smartphone market raced ahead at an astonishing growth rate of 38.8 percent in the third quarter, a number that reflected shipments of 467.9 million units, according to a report released this week by IDC. To put that number in perspective, the population of the United States is just 316.9 million. So you could sell a smartphone to every single person in the U.S., plus one to each of the 142 million people living in Russia, and still have about 8.5 million left over.
That's great news for the five leading smartphone vendors -- Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, and LG -- not to mention all the suppliers and developers that live in their ecosystems. Great news for now, that is. But I threw those statistics at you to make a point: The smartphone market could well be approaching saturation. "That rate of growth can't be supported, unless Verizon and AT&T start selling smartphones to extraterrestrials," quipped columnist Carl Weinschenk.
Indeed, there are already early signs that the market is running out of headroom. In South Korea, home to Samsung and one of the most connected places on Earth, each quarter of this year has seen about 1.35 million new smartphone subscriptions, compared to nearly twice that number a year ago, according to that country's Ministry of Science. And smartphone sales in Australia and New Zealand actually shrank in the second quarter of the year. Meanwhile, profit growth at companies like Apple and LG Electronics is slowing as price competition takes hold.
The mobile industry is hardly on the edge of an abyss, and the sky is not falling. But all this reminds me of the PC market in the 1990s, which also grew at a phenomenal rate. When the PC market approached saturation, profits declined as vendors fought for market share, and innovation slowed to the point where PCs became commodities. We may be headed in that direction yet again.
The long upgrade cycle There use to be a fairly regular PC upgrade cycle in business: Companies would upgrade their systems every three years or so, and individuals more or less followed suit. That's been changing. Although I don't have hard numbers on that, I suspect the cycle is moving closer to five years.
Maybe systems are somewhat sturdier these days. But more important is the lack of significant innovation. Laptops have gotten lighter and more powerful over the years, but until touchscreens and Windows 8 debuted, you could hardly tell one generation of PC from the other. (Not that Windows "Frankenstein," aka Windows 8, will revive the market; in fact, Windows 8 is hurting the PC market.)
Computer buyers are no dummies. Why spend money on a new PC when the old one does everything you need quite well? PC makers reacted by cutting prices, a fratricidal strategy that resulted in shrinking margins for everybody and the deaths of major companies (remember Gateway?) up and down the supply chain. Now, even Mac sales are declining.
This segment, from Sept. 11, 2008, is part of our Vintage Cafe series, in which we revisit some of our best studio performances.
English singer-songwriter Adele has always loved to sing. A fan of artists as diverse as Etta James, Jeff Buckley and Jill Scott, Adele developed a powerful voice of her own. In this segment, World Cafe host David Dye welcomes Adele, who performs songs from her debut album, 19.
Enrolling in the BRIT School (which produced artists such as Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Imogen Heap and Leona Lewis), Adele became a MySpace sensation in 2007. Drawing from day-to-day experiences during her turbulent teenage years, Adele invests her ballads about love and heartbreak with startling ease and maturity.
It's a happy ending for Neil the potbelly pig, who faced eviction from his California home. Pigs are allowed as pets in Sierra Madre, but not hogs. An animal control officer suspected Neil was a hog — that is, a pig weighing more than 120 pounds. But a protest rally turned into a party when Neil was designated a legal pig by the city.
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. It's a happy ending for Neil the popular potbelly pig, who faced eviction from his California home. Pigs are allowed as pets in the town of Sierra Madre, but not hogs. An animal control officer suspected Neil was a hog - that is, a pig weighing more than 120 pounds. As one local put it, if everyone overweight was considered, half the town would be evicted.
But a protest rally turned into a party when Neil was designated a legal pig by the city. It's MORNING EDITION.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
It's a happy ending for Neil the potbelly pig, who faced eviction from his California home. Pigs are allowed as pets in Sierra Madre, but not hogs. An animal control officer suspected Neil was a hog — that is, a pig weighing more than 120 pounds. But a protest rally turned into a party when Neil was designated a legal pig by the city.
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. It's a happy ending for Neil the popular potbelly pig, who faced eviction from his California home. Pigs are allowed as pets in the town of Sierra Madre, but not hogs. An animal control officer suspected Neil was a hog - that is, a pig weighing more than 120 pounds. As one local put it, if everyone overweight was considered, half the town would be evicted.
But a protest rally turned into a party when Neil was designated a legal pig by the city. It's MORNING EDITION.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
Sorry, National Institutes of Health: 2001 isn't 2003.
Photo & photo illustration by Slate
One of the juiciest, most heated, and ultimately most productive rivalries in the recent history of science was the race to sequence the human genome. On one side was a methodical, massive, publicly funded international project managed by the National Institutes of Health. On the other side was a lean, speedy, profit-driven company run by a brash scientist who came up with a method for sequencing DNA that ran circles around the NIH technique. The public consortium, led by Francis Collins, now head of the National Institutes of Health, criticized the company, Celera, for trying to turn a profit off the genome. J. Craig Venter, who ran Celera, had quit the public effort in frustration at its slow pace. His company’s slogan was “Speed Matters.” Members of the two teams despised one another. It was delicious.
Self-interest trumped rivalry for a brief time in June 2000, when the two teams called a truce and shook hands at a White House ceremony. They announced that they each had a working draft of the human genome and would soon publish their independent sequence maps jointly and reveal what they had discovered about life’s code.
The peace ended a few weeks later as they raced to piece together their sequences. The public consortium tried to prevent Science from publishing Celera’s genome over questions of how the data would be made available. (Disclosure: I worked for Science’s news department at the time.) And its scientists spent the days leading up to publication telling science reporters that Celera’s method had failed. (It hadn’t.)
Why in the world are the National Institutes of Health and the Smithsonian Institution celebrating the 10th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome this year?
After an exhausting final sprint by thousands of scientists, the two sequences of the human genome were revealed to the world on Feb. 12, 2001, to great acclaim, in Science and Nature (themselves archrivals). There were press conferences and celebrations and headlines around the world. The New York Times said the publications opened “a new era in human biology and medicine.” Eric Lander, one of the leaders of the public consortium, said, “We are standing at an extraordinary moment in scientific history. It's as though we have climbed to the top of the Himalayas. We can for the first time see the breathtaking vista of the human genome.” Collins wrote that “the publications in February 2001 carried with them the kind of satisfying scientific significance that laborers in the genome fields had longed for.” He told Science, “There’s a long list of things that blew my socks off,” such as the unexpectedly low number of genes. Venter, still reeling over the concerted effort to discredit his genome, told the New York Times, “If we weren't resistant and somewhat defiant this never would have gotten done,” and Don Kennedy, editor of Science, told the paper, “There is no doubt the world is getting [the human genome sequence] well before it otherwise would have if Venter had not entered the race.”
The genome sequences were accompanied in Science and Nature by dozens of analysis papers each from the two teams, wall-size posters of human chromosomes with their genetic sequences spelled out, timelines, and CD-ROMs. Scientists celebrated with Champagne, teary speeches, and blowout parties, including one at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Francis Collins was there: He performed onstage with his band. (They were called the Directors because the band members all directed NIH divisions, and everybody played lead guitar.) That date, again, was February 2001.
So why in the world are the National Institutes of Health and the Smithsonian Institution celebrating the 10th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome this year?
They didn’t miss a deadline or mess up the math. By designating 2003 as the year the genome was sequenced, the NIH is still fighting against Celera. It’s laying exclusive claim for credit and trying to push its rival out of the history books. It’s trying to give the leaders of the public consortium an edge in the battle for the inevitable Nobel Prize.The Celera genome paper had more than 200 authors, and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium’s paper listed more than 300, from 25 institutions. The Nobel Prize can be split only three ways.
In 2001 both teams clearly acknowledged that their sequences were first drafts. The maps had some gaps and fuzzy bits, but the main structure was known. Scientists could tally genes and place them in the correct positions on chromosomes. The two teams proved that their techniques for assembling 3 billion base pairs could work. They compared the human genomes with the genomes of other species. (We’re much more mouselike than anyone anticipated.)
After the dueling sequences were published, Celera shifted its focus from genome sequencing to drug development. The public consortium spiffed up its sequence and published the “complete” human genome in Nature in April 2003. This publication didn’t get a lot of attention, and it didn’t make major changes to the analyses from 2001.
I asked the National Human Genome Research Institute why it celebrated 2003 rather than 2001, and a spokesman replied (emphasis mine): “This is because 2003 marked the final release of the genome sequence, and the research the institute does now is widely based off of it. You’re right by saying that the 2001 papers were extremely important and groundbreaking, but 2003 marks the year that the Human Genome Project was completed and the completed genome sequence was released. There was still a little more research to be done to complete the sequence after the 2001 sequence was released.”
The NIH has been hosting anniversary events all year, but the most galling anniversary claim is made in an exhibit that opened this year at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the second-most-visited museum in the world. (Dang that Louvre.) It’s called “Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code,” and the promotional materials claim, “It took nearly a decade, three billion dollars, and thousands of scientists to sequence the human genome in 2003.” (Disclosure: I worked for Smithsonian magazine while the exhibition, produced in partnership with the NIH, was being planned, and I consulted very informally with the curators. That is, we had lunch and I warned them they were being played.) To be clear, I’m delighted that the Smithsonian has an exhibit on the human genome. And I’m a huge fan of the NIH. (To its credit, the NIH did host an anniversary symposium in 2011.) But the Smithsonian exhibit enshrines the 2003 date in the country’s museum of record and minimizes the great drama and triumph of 2001.
Celebrating 2003 rather than 2001 as the most important date in the sequencing of the human genome is like celebrating the anniversary of the final Apollo mission rather than the first one to land on the moon. Just this once, don’t listen to the NIH. Remember the thrills and rivalries and breathtaking accomplishments of 2001. And happy 12th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome.
Looks like another exit for an Israel-based startup — this one straddling the worlds of cloud services and hardware control. Soluto, a service that lets users manage PCs and other connected devices remotely, has been acquired by Asurion, a company that offers device insurance services. The news is being reported as a work in progress by TheMarker and Calcalist. Globes, meanwhile, is reporting this as a done deal. And we have confirmed the sale has been closed by two separate sources. We’re hearing reports of up to $130 million, specifically between $100 million and $130 million.
You can see where a deal with Asurion makes a lot of sense.
The latter company, based out of Kansas City, Missouri, partners with carriers like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Clear to resell its services to consumers. Those services include physical replacement of broken devices — consumers can file and track claims — but there are also a suite of services that are software-based, such as the ability to locate lost devices and back up content. Soluto will help Asurion extend and improve the latter part of the service, perhaps as a way also to offset some of the insurance risk around losing and replacing faulty or broken handsets.
It’s not clear whether Asurion will keep Soluto, and specifically its R&D operations, intact in Israel, or move everything over to the U.S. We have reached out to Soluto for comment, and are contacting Asurion as well, and will update the post as we learn more.
Soluto — which first had its debut at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 in the Startup Battlefield; it won — started out life as a cloud-based platform that let ordinary people help each other with managing their own and other people’s devices. Tomer Dvir, the CEO and co-founder, has told me that one of the driving ideas behind creating the service was to help his mother with her computer when he was not near her. “I can help her set up and run Skype, Spotify, whatever,” he said. Pretty hip mom, I’d say.
That initial consumer and specific PC focus helped the company with getting an early critical mass for its service. Today the company has clocked more than 3 million downloads of its product, and over 15 million “actions” carried out through its platform.
More recently the company has expanded to include other connected devices beyond PCs such as smartphones and tablets; and it has expanded into enterprise services — such as its SMB-focused products, launched in April of this year.
This has signalled a more formal approach to the kinds of device management you tend to associate with business services — mobile device management; hardware inventory; patch management; boot shortener; remote access, and so on. It has still continued to keep its focus on simplicity — taking a cue from the wider consumerization trend that has been so strong in the enterprise sector. “Ready to enjoy being the IT guy?” the site’s homepage asks visitors.
There werereports in Septemberthat Soluto was getting approached by an American software company, but those were never confirmed. In any case it looks like it’s been in exit talks for a little while at least. Soluto has raised some $18 million from investors including Index Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Proxima Ventures. (And CrunchFund, where TC co-founder Michael Arrington is a partner, is also an investor.)
University of Louisville researchers sign global licensing agreement
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Gary Mans gary.mans@louisville.edu 502-852-7504 University of Louisville
UofL Bucks for Brains researcher delivers for the Commonwealth
LOUISVILLE, Ky. The University of Louisville today announced that researcher Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, representing Regenerex LLC, has entered into a license and research collaboration agreement with Novartis to provide access to stem cell technology that has the potential to help transplant patients avoid taking anti-rejection medicine for life and could serve as a platform for treatment of other diseases.
The University of Louisville and Regenerex LLC announced the research collaboration agreement which will significantly enhance the university's Institute for Cellular Therapeutics' ability to carry out cutting edge research related to the Facilitating Cell, a novel cell discovered by Ildstad, a professor of surgery and director of the institute at UofL as well as CEO of Regenerex. Underpinning this collaboration is an exclusive global licensing and research collaboration agreement between Regenerex and Novartis.
Ildstad published results in a March 2012 Science Translational Medicine demonstrating the efficacy of this process, known as Facilitating Cell Therapy, or FCRx which is currently undergoing Phase II trials. Five of eight kidney transplant patients were able to stop taking about a dozen pills a day to suppress their immune systems. It was the first study of its kind where the donor and recipient did not have to be biologically related and did not have to be immunologically matched.
In a standard kidney transplant, the donor agrees to donate a kidney. In the approach being studied, the individual is asked to donate part of their immune system as well. The process begins about one month before the kidney transplant, when bone marrow stem cells are collected from the blood of the kidney donor using a process called apheresis. The donor cells are then processed, where they are enriched for developing "facilitating cells" believed to help transplants succeed. During the same time period, the recipient undergoes pre-transplant "conditioning," which includes radiation and chemotherapy to suppress the bone marrow so the donor's stem cells have more space to grow in the recipient's body.
One day after the kidney is transplanted into the recipient, the donor stem cells engraft in the marrow of the recipient and give rise to other specialized blood cells, like immune cells. The goal is to create an environment where two bone marrow systems co-exist and function in one person. Following transplantation, the recipient takes anti-rejection drugs which are decreased over time with the goal to stop a year after the transplant.
In 1998, Ildstad was one of the first recruits to the University of Louisville under the Commonwealth's Bucks for Brains initiative, advanced by former Gov. Paul Patton. As the Jewish Hospital Distinguished Chair in Transplantation Research, Ildstad brought a team of 25 families from Philadelphia to join the University of Louisville. In the following years the team has continued to examine the facilitating cell (FCRx) platform technology for the treatment of kidney transplant recipients as well as considering its potential for the treatment of red blood cell disorders, inherited metabolic storage disorders of childhood, and autoimmune disorders.
"Being a transplant recipient is not easy. In order to prevent rejection, current transplant recipients must take multiple pills a day for the rest of their lives. These immunosuppressive medications come with serious side effects with prolonged use including high blood pressure, diabetes, infection, heart disease and cancer, as well as direct damaging effects to the organ transplant," Ildstad said. "This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients."
"In 1997, the University of Louisville was given a mandate to become a premier metropolitan research university that transforms the lives of the people of Kentucky and beyond," said Dr. James Ramsey, president of UofL. "Dr. Ildstad was among the first faculty members hired utilizing seed funds from the state to help us attract highly talented researchers through the Bucks for Brains program. Regenerex demonstrates the potential for that vision to be realized bringing new jobs to the city, adding to the revenue from the Tax Increment Financing district and providing funding to UofL in support of our academic mission."
The collaboration provides for investments in research, as well as milestones and royalty payments from Regenerex to the University of Louisville in connection with commercialization of the FCRx technology. The therapeutic potential for the technology is wide ranging. The collaboration also involves a sponsored research agreement to support a multi-year collaboration between Regenerex, UofL and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research to pioneer new applications of the technology.
"The 'holy grail' of transplantation is immune tolerance, that is making the body recognize a transplanted organ as 'self' and not reject it as foreign tissue, but without the need for immunosuppressive drugs with their numerous serious side effects," said Dr. David L. Dunn, executive vice president for health affairs at UofL. "Dr. Ildstad and her team may well have solved this puzzle."
Ramsey noted that in addition to the supreme efforts of the research team, it would not have been possible for the work to move forward without the support of the state, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, Jewish Hospital Foundation, Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation and the National Stem Cell Foundation.
"It is immensely rewarding for our donors to know they helped move potentially life-changing therapies closer to being available for people in need worldwide," said Paula Grisanti, chair of the National Stem Cell Foundation.
###
About the University of Louisville
The University of Louisville is Kentucky's metropolitan research university. Located in the commonwealth's largest city, UofL is composed of 11 colleges and schools on three campuses. Most of the university's 22,000 students attend classes and live on or near the Belknap Campus, a park-like setting near historic Old Louisville that is home to seven colleges and schools, including most undergraduate programs. Bordered by its many medical partners, UofL's downtown Health Sciences Center is home to more than 3,000 students pursuing degrees in health-related fields with the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Public Health and Information Sciences, as well as 17 interdisciplinary centers and institutes. In 2012-13, UofL had $186.2 million in research expenditures.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
University of Louisville researchers sign global licensing agreement
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Gary Mans gary.mans@louisville.edu 502-852-7504 University of Louisville
UofL Bucks for Brains researcher delivers for the Commonwealth
LOUISVILLE, Ky. The University of Louisville today announced that researcher Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, representing Regenerex LLC, has entered into a license and research collaboration agreement with Novartis to provide access to stem cell technology that has the potential to help transplant patients avoid taking anti-rejection medicine for life and could serve as a platform for treatment of other diseases.
The University of Louisville and Regenerex LLC announced the research collaboration agreement which will significantly enhance the university's Institute for Cellular Therapeutics' ability to carry out cutting edge research related to the Facilitating Cell, a novel cell discovered by Ildstad, a professor of surgery and director of the institute at UofL as well as CEO of Regenerex. Underpinning this collaboration is an exclusive global licensing and research collaboration agreement between Regenerex and Novartis.
Ildstad published results in a March 2012 Science Translational Medicine demonstrating the efficacy of this process, known as Facilitating Cell Therapy, or FCRx which is currently undergoing Phase II trials. Five of eight kidney transplant patients were able to stop taking about a dozen pills a day to suppress their immune systems. It was the first study of its kind where the donor and recipient did not have to be biologically related and did not have to be immunologically matched.
In a standard kidney transplant, the donor agrees to donate a kidney. In the approach being studied, the individual is asked to donate part of their immune system as well. The process begins about one month before the kidney transplant, when bone marrow stem cells are collected from the blood of the kidney donor using a process called apheresis. The donor cells are then processed, where they are enriched for developing "facilitating cells" believed to help transplants succeed. During the same time period, the recipient undergoes pre-transplant "conditioning," which includes radiation and chemotherapy to suppress the bone marrow so the donor's stem cells have more space to grow in the recipient's body.
One day after the kidney is transplanted into the recipient, the donor stem cells engraft in the marrow of the recipient and give rise to other specialized blood cells, like immune cells. The goal is to create an environment where two bone marrow systems co-exist and function in one person. Following transplantation, the recipient takes anti-rejection drugs which are decreased over time with the goal to stop a year after the transplant.
In 1998, Ildstad was one of the first recruits to the University of Louisville under the Commonwealth's Bucks for Brains initiative, advanced by former Gov. Paul Patton. As the Jewish Hospital Distinguished Chair in Transplantation Research, Ildstad brought a team of 25 families from Philadelphia to join the University of Louisville. In the following years the team has continued to examine the facilitating cell (FCRx) platform technology for the treatment of kidney transplant recipients as well as considering its potential for the treatment of red blood cell disorders, inherited metabolic storage disorders of childhood, and autoimmune disorders.
"Being a transplant recipient is not easy. In order to prevent rejection, current transplant recipients must take multiple pills a day for the rest of their lives. These immunosuppressive medications come with serious side effects with prolonged use including high blood pressure, diabetes, infection, heart disease and cancer, as well as direct damaging effects to the organ transplant," Ildstad said. "This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients."
"In 1997, the University of Louisville was given a mandate to become a premier metropolitan research university that transforms the lives of the people of Kentucky and beyond," said Dr. James Ramsey, president of UofL. "Dr. Ildstad was among the first faculty members hired utilizing seed funds from the state to help us attract highly talented researchers through the Bucks for Brains program. Regenerex demonstrates the potential for that vision to be realized bringing new jobs to the city, adding to the revenue from the Tax Increment Financing district and providing funding to UofL in support of our academic mission."
The collaboration provides for investments in research, as well as milestones and royalty payments from Regenerex to the University of Louisville in connection with commercialization of the FCRx technology. The therapeutic potential for the technology is wide ranging. The collaboration also involves a sponsored research agreement to support a multi-year collaboration between Regenerex, UofL and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research to pioneer new applications of the technology.
"The 'holy grail' of transplantation is immune tolerance, that is making the body recognize a transplanted organ as 'self' and not reject it as foreign tissue, but without the need for immunosuppressive drugs with their numerous serious side effects," said Dr. David L. Dunn, executive vice president for health affairs at UofL. "Dr. Ildstad and her team may well have solved this puzzle."
Ramsey noted that in addition to the supreme efforts of the research team, it would not have been possible for the work to move forward without the support of the state, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, Jewish Hospital Foundation, Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation and the National Stem Cell Foundation.
"It is immensely rewarding for our donors to know they helped move potentially life-changing therapies closer to being available for people in need worldwide," said Paula Grisanti, chair of the National Stem Cell Foundation.
###
About the University of Louisville
The University of Louisville is Kentucky's metropolitan research university. Located in the commonwealth's largest city, UofL is composed of 11 colleges and schools on three campuses. Most of the university's 22,000 students attend classes and live on or near the Belknap Campus, a park-like setting near historic Old Louisville that is home to seven colleges and schools, including most undergraduate programs. Bordered by its many medical partners, UofL's downtown Health Sciences Center is home to more than 3,000 students pursuing degrees in health-related fields with the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Public Health and Information Sciences, as well as 17 interdisciplinary centers and institutes. In 2012-13, UofL had $186.2 million in research expenditures.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vBUaYFX6UGPtmlFGiiI0kErWymp1wjdpwTnUc1CCpAINhQup-TF3P1aFdECQJ8BfhRpIBUSW7qX8X4A5odFaIpLSXMrFLunEIzmdYOOW0=s0-d){kind=small}
Share
