It should be clear by now that there’s much more at play in Android 4.4 KitKat than some early reports alluded to, and one of the more interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits managed to escape the early leak treatment.
Tucked away toward the tail-end of Google’s Nexus 5/KitKat presentation was a mention of a feature called App Indexing that should get companies (and the Android app developers that work for them) a little worked up. That’s because Google has developed a way to deep-link to the contents of an app from within a user’s Google search results with a feature it calls App Indexing.
Here’s how it works. Say you’re using the Google Search app to dig up some dirt on that Ender’s Game movie that doesn’t look very good. If you happen to have the IMDb app installed on your device while you search, you’ll be treated to an info card in that results stream that includes an “Open in app” button. Give it a quick tap and the IMDb app will spring to life and immediately direct you to its Ender’s Game listing.
Naturally, the feature isn’t just limited to showing off movie details — so far the full list of supporters includes Allthecooks, AllTrails, Beautylish, Etsy, Expedia, Flixster, Healthtap, IMDb, Moviefone, Newegg (yes!), OpenTable, and Trulia.
The way Google sees it, the move is all about providing these companies with a choice. If they think their mobile interfaces are enough to keep users engaged, they can simple go about their business. But if they already have an Android app (or are in the process of building one) that can do a better job of engaging with its users, a little extra work to implement those deep links may be well worth it.
It’s not hard to look at this as a move to bolster Android app development, either. There’s little doubting that Android is a global force — which may be only compounded by the fact that Android 4.4 KitKat may drive device sales in developing markets by bringing a more advanced feature set to cheap hardware — and in many cases the Google Search app is going along for the ride. That means that with any luck, huge swaths of the global Android community will be searching for stuff using the Google search app and seeing those deep-linked “Open in app” buttons when they’ve got the right apps installed. Tell me that’s not a compelling reason for a company to develop an Android app if they haven’t already.
Despite the buy-in from all those app partners, it’ll be some time before users like me will actually start getting those results in the wild. Google is testing the feature with those previously listed partners, but the updated cards that will display that information won’t actually roll out until some time in November.
Hernani Perpetuo is the latest addition to the UFC’s welterweight division.
Two months after winning the Shooto world title with a unanimous decision victory over MMA veteran Tommy Depret at Shooto Brazil 42, Perpetuo (17-3, 1 no-contest), a Nova Uniao product, signed a deal with the UFC and is expected to make his Octagon debut early 2014.
"I’ve signed a contract with the UFC today," Perpetuo told MMAFighting.com on Thursday, confirming an initial report by Combate.
"I already expected to sign with a major promotion after I won the Shooto title, and I’m looking forward my first fight."
Perpetuo’s five-round war with Depret was the ninth bout of his undefeated streak, which includes two knockouts and one submission.
"I have to win my first fight and then climb the rankings step by step," he said. "The Shooto title was very important to open doors and get me in the UFC."
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Southern California woman cited for wearing Internet-connected eyeglasses while driving plans to contest the citation.
Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding Tuesday evening in San Diego, when a California Highway Patrol officer noticed she was wearing Google Glass and tacked on a citation usually given to drivers who may be distracted by a video or TV screen.
The lightweight eyeglasses, which are not yet widely available to the public, feature a hidden computer and a thumbnail-size transparent display screen above the right eye. Users can scan maps for directions — as well as receive web search results, read email and engage in video chats — without reaching for a smartphone.
Abadie, a software developer, said in an interview that she was not using her Google Glass when she was pulled over for allegedly going about 80 mph in a 65 mph zone on the drive home to Temecula after visiting a friend.
"The Glass was on, but I wasn't actively using it" to conserve the battery, she said.
Abadie expressed surprise that wearing the glasses while driving would be illegal and said she's "pretty sure" she will fight the ticket. First, she said, she needs to seek legal counsel. In the flurry of online commentary her traffic stop has generated, several people saying they are attorneys offered their services.
"The law is not clear, the laws are very outdated," Abadie said, suggesting that navigating with the device could be less distracting than with a GPS unit or phone.
"Maybe Glass is more a solution to the cellphone problem than a problem," she said.
It's unclear whether a citation for Google Glass has been issued before. The CHP said it is not sure whether an officer within its own ranks has written one, and an agency spokesman pointed out hundreds of law enforcement agencies in California alone can write traffic tickets.
Legislators in at least two states, Delaware and West Virginia, have introduced bills that would specifically ban driving with Google Glass. Authorities in the United Kingdom are mulling a similar ban.
About 10,000 units have been distributed so far in the United States to "pioneers," and this week Google announced another 30,000 would be available for $1,500 apiece. Abadie said she got hers in May and has become an "evangelist" for the technology.
A spokesman for Google did not reply to a request for comment. On its website, Google says this about using the headgear while driving: "Read up and follow the law. Above all, even when you're following the law, don't hurt yourself or others by failing to pay attention to the road."
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Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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Follow Justin Pritchard at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge who ordered changes to the New York City police stop-and-frisk program and was removed from the case says she didn't comment on it inappropriately.
Judge Shira Scheindlin (SHEER'-uh SHIND'-lin) says quotes from her written opinions gave the appearance she had commented on the case in interviews. She says a careful reading of each interview will reveal no such comments were made.
A federal appeals court Thursday blocked the judge's order requiring changes to the police department's stop-and-frisk program. It said interviews she gave called her impartiality into question.
The judge ruled in August police discriminated against minorities in stopping and questioning people because of reasonable suspicions crimes were about to occur or had occurred. She ordered major changes.
Supporters say the changes will end unfair practices. The city and other opponents say the changes won't reduce crime.
AAAOct. 31, 20134:58 PM ET Kenya bombs Somali militant camp after mall attack AP
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, a Kenya AIr Force F5 jet fighter takes to the sky from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, a Kenya AIr Force F5 jet fighter takes to the sky from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011 file photo, two Kenyan army soldiers shield themselves from the downdraft of a Kenyan air force helicopter as it flies away from their base near the seaside town of Bur Garbo, Somalia. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013, file photo, a woman who had been hiding during the gun battle runs for cover after armed police enter the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya after gunmen threw grenades and opened fire. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Jonathan Kalan, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, Kenyan Air Force F5 jet fighters stand at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken from footage from Citizen TV, via the Kenya Defence Forces and made available Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, a man reported to be Umayr, one of the four armed militants, walks in a store at the Westgate Mall, during the four-day-long siege in Nairobi, Kenya which killed more than 60 people. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Kenya Defence Force via Citizen TV, File)
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya's military says its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall.
Col. Cyrus Oguna said Thursday the militants who carried out the Westgate attack received training at the camp, which he said was 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Binswor, Somalia.
Oguna said the military won't know how many of the 300 militants in the camp were killed or wounded until an assessment Friday. He said four military trucks were destroyed. Oguna said "many more" such attacks will be carried out.
The four-day siege of Westgate Mall began Sept. 21. The al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, which killed at least 67 people, in retaliation for the Kenyan military's push into Somalia in 2011.
“Please share with me all your stories of the male professors you had in college who thrived upon and demanded female admiration to function,” Mallory Ortberg, editor of the website the Toast, tweeted. She soon followed up with a humor piece imagining a conversation between two male professors bemoaning diminishing adulation from the new generation of female pupils.
“Just yesterday, in one of my intro classes, I used the word ‘problematic’ in a sentence—real casual, just to let them know I’m one of the good guys—and not one of them stayed after the lecture to ask me just what I meant by that or to see if they could borrow the conspicuously dog-eared copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed I like to leave on my desk in case any female students want to borrow it,” one imaginary professor says.
He continues, later, after some bottle-passing: “That copy has my phone number in it. You know, the old ‘write your phone number on the front page of a copy you lend to female students only under the “IF LOST PLEASE RETURN TO” bubble’ gag?”
Almost immediately after her original tweet, Ortberg’s Twitter followers began to respond with their experiences with such professors, some humorous and others less so. A sampling:
@hallleloujah: “had one who called everything sexy in a weirdly drawn out, British way. Also started a rumor he was undercover for CIA (he wasn't).”
@kitalita: “one kept conveniently ‘forgetting’ my graded assignments in his office and specifically told me he was divorced (he wasn't).”
@AmyRosary: “Let's talk about the English department chair I got fired for harassing EACH AND EVERY female English major. He liked to insist [continued in a separate tweet] upon meeting girls in his office and serenading them with Bob Dylan covers with the door closed, or ‘accidentally’ putting on porn.”
@kellieherson: “Providing a validation space for those men is the only reason university administrators allow the humanities to continue to exist.”
Another follower cited a proclivity for flirting among her theater professors, one of whom bragged about once trying to meet women with actor Pat Morita. One said her professor had emailed her to tell her that not doing her homework was “not sexy”; yet another fended off a request for her to model for a professor who said he was an amateur photographer.
Jaya Saxena, a web editor for the New-York Historical Society and writer who studied English and political science at Tulane University, said: “Lots of [him] inviting classes to his house for pizza and making sure to corner the girls and talk about his art collection.” That professor also once hit on her in a bar, she posted.
“If your job is to command the attention of a room and instill knowledge into people, then you're probably going to thrive on receiving that attention. That just comes with the work, right?”
In an email, Saxena said she enjoyed close relationships with several of her professors, and that in New Orleans, seeing faculty members out at a bar was not outside the norm. But the “line gets drawn when you're throwing your arms around your students and drunkenly saying they look hot when they dance!”
Saxena said she never took classes from the professor mentioned, and therefore felt less intimidated than awkward following the incident.
That wasn’t the case for Tamara Johnson, who tweeted about an English professor who told her as an undergraduate that “female students were like fishing lures, drawing male instructors into deep waters.” He also made inappropriate remarks about rape, vaguely in relation to a lecture, soon after, she said—making her feel highly uncomfortable.
Johnson, who has her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from San Diego State, said she saw male professors seeking sexual attention from their female students as the rule, not the exception. Saxena, by contrast, said there were several “attractive” male professors in her department who reacted to the attention from students in different ways. And while male professors did seem to bask more in that attention than did female professors, she said, “I never saw the ‘attention-needing male professor’ as a rule.”
Stepping out for some Halloween fun, Alessandra Ambrosio and her family stopped by Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in West Hollywood on Wednesday (October 30).
The 32-year-old supermodel and her kids Anja and Noah enjoyed a few activities while making their rounds to find the perfect pumpkin for the spooky holiday.
Meanwhile, Miss Ambrosio faces drama surrounding the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show after one of the Angels started causing a few issues.
According to the New York Post, Erin Heatherton might be removed from the rosters as she been declared as being too "difficult to work with."
This is the second Angel that has been removed from the fashion show this year for bad work ethics. Miranda Kerr was also kicked off the line for having a "difficult" reputation and not being considered a big seller.
Stay linked for GossipCenter for more info on this year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show!
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.
If you’ve got questions about the PlayStation 4, Sony has answers. The electronics giant recently published an extensive FAQ to the PlayStation blog attempting to answer any final questions before the $400 next-gen console launches on November 15.
Interesting tidbits placed front-and-center for PlayStation fans include information about swapping the PS4’s hard drive, game caching, media playback, and PS3 peripheral compatibility.
Those are just a few of the finer points we’ll cover in more detail here, but anyone on the fence about whether to buy a PS4 or the Xbox One should give Sony’s FAQ an in-depth reading.
Hard times for the hard drive
PlayStation fans already knew they could replace their console’s hard drive, but now Sony has laid out a few requirements the hard drive needs to reach. First of all, the PS4 itself comes with a 500GB 5400-rpm SATA II hard drive. Sony says replacement hard drives must “comply with these standards.”
The replacement drive also has to offer more than 160GB storage (I knew that 161GB HDD would come in handy), and must be no thicker than 9.5mm.
It’s nice that the PS4 has a relatively low minimum storage size, but swapping a 500GB hard drive for a 250GB unit would be madness for several reasons. When using a disc-based game, the PS4 requires you to cache gaming data on your hard drive before playing. And the size of some of these games is huge. Sony’s Killzone: Shadow Fall, for instance, will require 50GB of storage, according to Gaming Blend.
More importantly, the PS4 will not support external hard drives. Investing in a 1TB drive might not be such a bad idea for prolific gamers who don’t want to spend a lot of time swapping gaming data back and forth.
Whither, the media?
Microsoft is hoping to make the Xbox platform—including both its 360 and One consoles—the pre-eminent living room entertainment platform. Not so with the PS4, apparently. Sony’s new console won’t support a few niceties such as DLNA streaming from your PC. Playback of CDs and MP3s is also out.
The lack of media playback options led to some blowback on Twitter, as Engadget first reported, from disgruntled media streaming users. “Thanks for the feedback to the lack of MP3 and DLNA support at the launch of PS4,” Sony Computer Entertainment chief Shuhei Yoshida said on Twitter. “I’ll share with the PS4 Dev team for future consideration.”
As with the PS3, the PS4 will support Blu-ray and DVD movie playback, but to use the feature you’ll have to go through a one-time online activation process.
Peripherals on the outskirts
There will be a few PlayStation 3 accessories you’ll be able to bring with you into the next generation including PlayStation Move, some USB controllers, USB headsets, and USB and Bluetooth keyboards.
Sony’s list of general PS3 peripheral categories that will be compatible with the PS4 (click to enlarge).
USB headsets won’t be compatible out of the box, however. You’ll have to download and install the day one update before they’ll work.
Odds and ends
Like we said, there’s a ton of content on the PlayStation FAQ, but here are a few other things to note. The PS4 won’t be supporting 4K resolution right now, but Sony says it is thinking about adding support later. Short of a PS5 roll out, it’s a pretty good bet that the PS4 will end up supporting 4K in the future as the new super resolution goes mainstream.
Charge time for the new DualShock controller is two hours.
A PlayStation Plus membership is required for most online multiplayer gaming. But even non-PS Plus members can use the feature on a member’s console as long as the PS4 is designated as the member’s primary gaming box.
The PS4 will support up to 16 local accounts at one time in addition to temporary guest accounts.
If you’ve read through the PS4 FAQ and still can’t get enough PlayStation information, you should also check out Sony’s recent update about what the console’s day one update will include.
And so it begins. Twitter, now firmly on the road to IPO, has equally firmly turned its attention to monetisation — which means it’s turning on new features that are designed, first and foremost, with advertisers in mind. And with the goal of attracting a more mainstream user-base.
(This being timed to coincide with Halloween is probably not at all coincidental. The disproportionate pull of people dressing up for Halloween on apps and services would make a fascinating study — see also FrontBack recently tweaking its offering so you can compose a shot with two images from the rear camera — thereby enabling users to take lots of shots of other people’s costumes).
Returning to Twitter, what that means in practice is the densely packed wall of 140-character tweets which allowed Twitter to be an exceptional information delivery mechanism is now being interrupted by visual media.
Pictures, as countless photo-sharing apps prove, draw the eye and the attention. They crowd out words. Which means that the Twitter timeline has become less functional, and more trivial.
Pictures are distracting. That’s why advertisers love them. The big bold image can grab you, even if the product itself isn’t something you’d go looking for yourself. Images by their nature are arresting.
But if your primary product is an information network, then injecting visual media necessarily dilutes the offering.
Literally in the physical space sense. These visual media tweets take up more room than a typical text tweet (unless it’s stuffed with line breaks) — so users’ screen real estate is getting disproportionately hogged by anyone choosing to tweet out Twitter photos or Vine videos.
Obviously, Twitter users should expect vast amounts of visual media to be spewed out by advertisers all too soon — giving them a neat workaround to make an advert stand out in a sea of 140-characters.
Twitter’s core product is also now being diluted. The density of the information conveyed by the timeline is being watered down by whatever random visual imagery your followers are tweeting at any given moment (real-time events like popular TV broadcasts and big sports matches could easily end up overwhelming Twitter, more so than they already do).
It’s not that images and videos can’t be interesting; of course they can. But by forcing users to view media before deciding whether it is worth viewing (i.e. by reading the context provided by the accompanying text tweet before they click on the media link), Twitter is removing a vital content filter from its own network.
Now, if you’re using Twitter’s web client, there is no opt out of this visual clutter. And that makes Twitter step a little closer to the kind of content you’re forced to eyeball on Google+ or Facebook. So basically:
You can turn off the new media injection ‘feature’ in Twitter’s mobile apps (perhaps for download speed/data conservation reasons), but Twitter has confirmed to TechCrunch there is no off switch in its web client.
At the time of writing Twitter had not responded to a question asking why it is not offering an opt out to users of its web client.
What this means is that if you value Twitter as a fast information resource on your desktop device then the only option is to use an alternative Twitter client such as Tweetbot (which costs £14 on the Mac App Store vs Twitter’s free web client).
(On that point, Twitter has previously limited its API, thereby throttling the growth potential of third party clients, so opt-out options are being limited too.)
In my view, Twitter forcibly injecting media previews is not cool and makes the service less useful to me. But on the flip side — and there is a flip-side — pictures are very accessible, and are more likely to appeal to a mainstream user vs a dense wall of text that needs to be filtered and unpicked on the fly. So it’s easy to see their rational here.
A wall of tweets is great for busy journalists, but likely somewhat alienating for a first time user trying to figure out what Twitter is for. And attracting more users, and more mainstream users, is a key challenge for Twitter — being as it has a growth problem.
Injecting visual media is not the only recent change Twitter has made that tweaks its product to do a bit more hand-holding for newbies and less techie folk, either.
Back in August, for instance, it flipped the format of the timeline by adding a new conversation view that displays @replies in sequence to the tweets that generated them. For seasoned Twitter who knew how to follow the @reply trail, this change was an irritation — because it also dilutes the density of and interrupts the flow of the timeline.
But for newbies it probably helps to generate context on the fly, and also signposts how the service works. In other words: two Twitter birds, one stone.
I recently went through the process of setting my mum up on Twitter, and when you revisit the process of starting again from scratch with zero followers it’s easy to see how hard it is for a newcomer to hook into the service.
A lot of effort is required to ‘get’ Twitter, in terms of finding other users who are tweeting about things you’re interested in. And, unlike Facebook, none of my mum’s peer group is using Twitter. It become evident that a big portion of Twitter’s efforts at the new user sign-up stage are focused on pushing newcomers to follow celebrity accounts, as a way to offer a mainstream way into its service.
As Twitter prepares to IPO, and becomes answerable to a new influx of investors, it’s inevitable that it’s going to have to find more and more ways to make its service more mainstream. And that’s going to change its core product — in ways that long-time users are going to struggle with.
Add to that, with so much energy and attention still being sucked into photo-sharing services/visual social networks like Instagram, Twitter is evidently feeling a need to diversify beyond text.
Prettying up the timeline with pictures is therefore an obvious next step — it’s just a shame Twitter can’t throw a bone to the subsection of long-time users that value its service as an information resource and give us an opt-out of these mainstream changes.
By all means bury that off switch deep in settings where mainstream users will never find it. But give us an out so we can keep on using the Twitter we know and love.
After all, if we wanted to spend our time idly eyeballing a stream of random eye candy, we’d have long since migrated to Google+…
The company bills itself as “the first offline dating site” because of its emphasis on real-world activities. Beyond the obvious dating site features (browsing profiles, sending messages to set up dates), HowAboutWe offers the ability to post local date ideas, to browse ideas from others, and to see who’s online nearby.
Head of PR Jade Clark told me via email that the HowAboutWe already has international users, but the app was only available in English, limiting its growth outside the United States. Now it’s available in 15 new languages covering more than 30 countries, including Japan, France, and Russia.
The company says it’s also making all features in the app available for free to international users, in contrast to the US, where premium features like unlimited membership can cost between $8 and $35 per month. Asked why HowAboutWe is taking this approach, Clark said the first step is “to extend our reach as a brand and to hit critical mass in one of these new markets,” and then to look at monetization options.
HowAboutWe Dating (that’s the singles product) has 1.7 million users in the US, while there are half a million HowAboutWe for Couples users in four markets, the company says. When asked about mobile and international plans for the couples product, Clark said, “Yes, we’re working to expand our mobile offerings and have some big announcements tied to this planned for Q1 .”
Co-founder and co-CEO Aaron Schildkrout has also to put together a blog post with his team about “10 Things You Need to Know Before Internationalizing Your App.” Many of those items are pretty technical (“All of your translatable copy should be stored in strings”) but some are more general — for example, he talks about the challenge of languages that require “grammatical differences for men and women”.
His final point: “It will always take 3x longer than you think!”
Getting in the Halloween spirit with her little ones, Angelina Jolie took half of her brood to a local party store in Gold Coast City, Australia on Sunday (October 27).
The "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" star was accompanied by Pax, Knox, and Vivienne while wearing a black top and flowing black pants.
Currently, the 38-year-old actress is Down Under to work on directing her upcoming film called, "Unbroken." The movie tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II.
Starring as Zamperini is Jack O'Connell, with Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Alex Russell and Finn Wittrock rounding out the cast. Just in pre-production now, the movie is schedule to hit theaters on Christmas Day 2014.
New Texas A&M gene study aimed at enhanced cotton fiber breeding, toolkits
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
29-Oct-2013
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Contact: Dr. Hongbin Zhang hbz7049@tamu.edu 979-862-2244 Texas A&M AgriLife Communications
High tech world of genetics expected to advance cotton research
COLLEGE STATION A new study by Texas A&M University cotton researchers and breeders will take advantage of new high-throughput sequencing technology to rapidly advance cotton genetics research and breeding.
Their goal: maintain U.S. cotton's competitiveness in the world cotton market, according to Dr. Hongbin Zhang, professor of plant genomics and systems biology and director of the Laboratory for Plant Genomics and Molecular Genetics in College Station.
The three-year, $500,000 National Institute for Food and Agriculture-funded study, will be conducted by Zhang, along with Dr. Meiping Zhang, Texas A&M AgriLife Research associate research scientist; Dr. C. Wayne Smith, Texas A&M professor of cotton breeding and soil and crop sciences associate department head, and Dr. Steve Hague, associate professor of cotton genetics and breeding in the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Cotton Improvement Lab.
"Cotton is the leading textile fiber and a major bioenergy oilseed crop in Texas and the U.S., with an annual economic impact of about $120 billion in the U.S.," Zhang said.
"In our previous studies, we have already constructed the first genome-wide physical map of Upland cotton, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the cotton in Texas and the U.S." he said. "We are also using the physical map as a platform to sequence the cotton genome."
Also, they previously developed a population of 1,172 recombinant inbred lines that are essential to fine map the cotton genome and genes of economic importance for fiber and oilseed production, Zhang said.
They phenotyped seven of the traits important for fiber quality and yield in 200 of those lines and their parents using three replicated field trials for three years at College Station. The researchers then sequenced and profiled the gene expressions in the developing fibers of those lines, Zhang said.
"Now we want to develop a new and advanced breeding system in cotton, such as gene-based breeding, where we are selecting the target traits based on the genes controlling the traits, gene activities and gene interaction networks."
The long-term goals are to clone the genes that control all major traits of cotton fiber quality and fiber yield, determine their molecular basis and regulation mechanisms, and develop fiber gene-based toolkits, enabling enhanced cotton fiber breeding, he said.
The breeding toolkits to be developed will enhance breeding for all major cotton fiber traits, including fiber yield, lint percent, fiber length, strength, micronaire, uniformity and elongation across the U.S. cotton breeding programs, Zhang said.
This study, he said, will be used to advance research efforts toward cloning and molecular characterization of the genes and trait locations important for fiber quality and yield. Also, the study will develop a "golden" standard genome sequence for Upland cotton from the sequences previously generated by this and other cotton research programs.
Zhang said if they can decipher the molecular basis of cotton fiber quality and yield, a gene-based advanced and efficient cotton breeding program could be developed.
In this new study, the team will further phenotype the 200 lines and parents for the seven major fiber quality and yield component traits in replicated field trials for two years at two additional locations in the U.S. Cotton Belt - Lubbock and Saint Joseph, La. - using the high volume instrument.
This will allow the genetic variation of the traits to be measured accurately and the genes controlling the traits to be mapped reliably, he said.
Zhang said more than 800 fiber samples will be collected from the field trials of the 200 lines. The samples can be phenotyped in five major fiber quality component traits within an eight-hour day using the high volume machine.
Using the Restriction site-Associated DNA sequencing technology that they established in their lab, they will genotype the 200 lines and parents and a panel of 50-100 cotton breeding or germplasm lines widely used in the U.S. cotton breeding programs.
The sequencing and fiber quality and yield data will be analyzed to identify single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, markers across the cotton genome, construct a high-density SNP marker map for cotton, map the genes controlling the fiber traits and develop DNA toolkits for enhanced cotton breeding.
Furthermore, since a panel of 50-100 cotton breeding or germplasm lines widely used in the U.S. cotton breeding programs will be sequenced using the same technology, the toolkits developed in the project can be quickly transferred to and used by their and other cotton breeding programs.
When the study is complete, Zhang and his team expect to have a high-density genetic map for cotton that consists of more than 10,000 genomic SNPs and more than 2,000 "10-days past anthesis" fiber expressed gene SNPs, yielding a marker density map four-fold higher than those of existing cotton genetic maps.
The resultant genetic map of this project will be combined with the physical map and genome sequence of cotton previously developed, he said. Together, these are expected to provide comprehensive and integrated platforms and tools for advanced cotton genetics research and enhanced cotton breeding.
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New Texas A&M gene study aimed at enhanced cotton fiber breeding, toolkits
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
29-Oct-2013
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Contact: Dr. Hongbin Zhang hbz7049@tamu.edu 979-862-2244 Texas A&M AgriLife Communications
High tech world of genetics expected to advance cotton research
COLLEGE STATION A new study by Texas A&M University cotton researchers and breeders will take advantage of new high-throughput sequencing technology to rapidly advance cotton genetics research and breeding.
Their goal: maintain U.S. cotton's competitiveness in the world cotton market, according to Dr. Hongbin Zhang, professor of plant genomics and systems biology and director of the Laboratory for Plant Genomics and Molecular Genetics in College Station.
The three-year, $500,000 National Institute for Food and Agriculture-funded study, will be conducted by Zhang, along with Dr. Meiping Zhang, Texas A&M AgriLife Research associate research scientist; Dr. C. Wayne Smith, Texas A&M professor of cotton breeding and soil and crop sciences associate department head, and Dr. Steve Hague, associate professor of cotton genetics and breeding in the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Cotton Improvement Lab.
"Cotton is the leading textile fiber and a major bioenergy oilseed crop in Texas and the U.S., with an annual economic impact of about $120 billion in the U.S.," Zhang said.
"In our previous studies, we have already constructed the first genome-wide physical map of Upland cotton, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the cotton in Texas and the U.S." he said. "We are also using the physical map as a platform to sequence the cotton genome."
Also, they previously developed a population of 1,172 recombinant inbred lines that are essential to fine map the cotton genome and genes of economic importance for fiber and oilseed production, Zhang said.
They phenotyped seven of the traits important for fiber quality and yield in 200 of those lines and their parents using three replicated field trials for three years at College Station. The researchers then sequenced and profiled the gene expressions in the developing fibers of those lines, Zhang said.
"Now we want to develop a new and advanced breeding system in cotton, such as gene-based breeding, where we are selecting the target traits based on the genes controlling the traits, gene activities and gene interaction networks."
The long-term goals are to clone the genes that control all major traits of cotton fiber quality and fiber yield, determine their molecular basis and regulation mechanisms, and develop fiber gene-based toolkits, enabling enhanced cotton fiber breeding, he said.
The breeding toolkits to be developed will enhance breeding for all major cotton fiber traits, including fiber yield, lint percent, fiber length, strength, micronaire, uniformity and elongation across the U.S. cotton breeding programs, Zhang said.
This study, he said, will be used to advance research efforts toward cloning and molecular characterization of the genes and trait locations important for fiber quality and yield. Also, the study will develop a "golden" standard genome sequence for Upland cotton from the sequences previously generated by this and other cotton research programs.
Zhang said if they can decipher the molecular basis of cotton fiber quality and yield, a gene-based advanced and efficient cotton breeding program could be developed.
In this new study, the team will further phenotype the 200 lines and parents for the seven major fiber quality and yield component traits in replicated field trials for two years at two additional locations in the U.S. Cotton Belt - Lubbock and Saint Joseph, La. - using the high volume instrument.
This will allow the genetic variation of the traits to be measured accurately and the genes controlling the traits to be mapped reliably, he said.
Zhang said more than 800 fiber samples will be collected from the field trials of the 200 lines. The samples can be phenotyped in five major fiber quality component traits within an eight-hour day using the high volume machine.
Using the Restriction site-Associated DNA sequencing technology that they established in their lab, they will genotype the 200 lines and parents and a panel of 50-100 cotton breeding or germplasm lines widely used in the U.S. cotton breeding programs.
The sequencing and fiber quality and yield data will be analyzed to identify single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, markers across the cotton genome, construct a high-density SNP marker map for cotton, map the genes controlling the fiber traits and develop DNA toolkits for enhanced cotton breeding.
Furthermore, since a panel of 50-100 cotton breeding or germplasm lines widely used in the U.S. cotton breeding programs will be sequenced using the same technology, the toolkits developed in the project can be quickly transferred to and used by their and other cotton breeding programs.
When the study is complete, Zhang and his team expect to have a high-density genetic map for cotton that consists of more than 10,000 genomic SNPs and more than 2,000 "10-days past anthesis" fiber expressed gene SNPs, yielding a marker density map four-fold higher than those of existing cotton genetic maps.
The resultant genetic map of this project will be combined with the physical map and genome sequence of cotton previously developed, he said. Together, these are expected to provide comprehensive and integrated platforms and tools for advanced cotton genetics research and enhanced cotton breeding.
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They’re both massive pop stars, each with new albums on deck, but it turns out Lady Gaga and Britney Spears haven’t hit the studio together.
Earlier this month, rumors began to surface that Mother Monster would make a cameo on one of Spears’ new Britney Jean tracks, but producer William Orbit has set the record straight.
He tweeted, “I see the rumors about a GG vocal collaboration on ‘Alien’ have died down. U prob already know it, but can confirm: No collab.”
Britney will release Britney Jean on December 3rd, but first she’ll drop her next single “Perfume” on November 5th!
Gartner's recent magic quadrant for IT Service Support Management included no vendors as leaders or innovators. Learn why and how ITinvolve is delivering an innovative service desk solution that empowers IT staff through social collaboration and visualization to improve incident analysis and triage to speed incident resolution time.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations said Wednesday it has received assurances from the U.S. government that U.N. communications networks "are not and will not be monitored" by American intelligence agencies. But chief U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky would not comment on whether the world body had been monitored in the past, as reported recently by the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Nesirky said the United Nations had been in contact with Washington about the reports that surfaced two months ago and has received a U.S. guarantee of no current or future eavesdropping.
"Back in August when these reports first surfaced, we said we would be in touch with the relevant authorities," he said. "And I can tell you that we were indeed in touch with the U.S. authorities. I understand that the U.S. authorities have given assurance that the United Nations communications are not and will not be monitored."
Nesirky would not elaborate on whether spying had taken place and declined to answer related questions. For emphasis, he held up a piece of paper that said: "No comment."
A U.S. official told The Associated Press that "The United States is not conducting electronic surveillance targeting the United Nations headquarters in New York." The official, who was not authorized to be named, spoke on condition of anonymity.
It was not clear whether foreign U.N. missions in New York could be monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, who held the post at the United Nations from 2005-2006, would not comment on "what may or may not have gone on in the past" because he's no longer in government.
"That said, it seems to me that the United Nations and everybody walking through the U.N. building are perfectly legitimate intelligence targets, and I think any decision by any president to say we are not going to eavesdrop on U.N. headquarters is a mistake," he told the AP.
"There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says you may not eavesdrop on the U.N.," Bolton said. "Silence and a deeply emphasized 'No comment' is how you should deal with all these intelligence questions."
Der Spiegel reported that documents it obtained from U.S. leaker Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency secretly monitored the U.N.'s internal video conferencing system by decrypting it last year.
Der Spiegel quoted an NSA document as saying that within three weeks, the number of decoded communications had increased from 12 to 458. Der Spiegel also reported that the NSA installed bugs in the European Union's office building in Washington and infiltrated the EU's computer network.
The United Nations lodged objections. U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said in August that international treaties protect U.N. offices and all diplomatic missions from interference, spying and eavesdropping.
"The inviolability of diplomatic missions, including the United Nations, has been well-established in international law, and therefore all states are expected to act accordingly," Nesirky said Wednesday.
The 1961 Vienna Convention regulates diplomatic issues and status among nations and international organizations. Among other things, it says a host country cannot search diplomatic premises or seize its documents or property. It also says the host government must permit and protect free communication between the diplomats of the mission and their home country.
However, wiretapping and eavesdropping have been used for decades, most dramatically between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
COLLEGE STATION Meclizine, an over-the-counter drug used for decades to treat nausea and motion sickness, has the potential for new uses to treat certain infectious diseases and some forms of cancer, according to Dr. Vishal M. Gohil, Texas A&M AgriLife Research biochemist.
"Clearly this drug has many potential new applications," Gohil said. "And now that we know its new target within the cell, we can start to explore ways of using it to treat other diseases. We can 'repurpose' this drug."
The research on meclizine appears in the current online version of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
"We found a particular enzyme which is inhibited by meclizine has been proposed (in other research) to be a drug target for the treatment of many diseases, including infectious diseases like malaria and African sleeping sickness," Gohil said. "And this pathway has also been proposed to be a critical pathway for the proliferation of cancer cells."
Gohil said his research, which included collaboration with scientists at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Rochester and the University of Guelph, had already shown that the drug also works in the treatment of heart attack and stroke.
Meclizine is an antihistamine, synthesized in the 1950s and later found to be useful for treating nausea, motion sickness and vertigo.
Gohil, who also is an assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University, said he started working on the compound when he identified it in a drug-screening experiment aimed at discovering compounds or drugs that inhibit mitochondrial respiration, a process that provides energy to cells.
Mitochondria are structures found in the cells of all eukaryotes, organisms with one or more cells containing a nuclei and organelles that perform specific tasks. Enclosed in membrane, mitochondria are responsible for supplying the cell with energy and are connected to a cell's life and death.
"When that drug screen identified meclizine, it was a bit of a surprise for us, because this compound had been in the market for several years and had never been linked to mitochondrial respiration," Gohil said. "It's a known drug, and was known to target a few of the molecules within the cell."
But unlike other classes of antihistamine, he noted, meclizine has a unique property which allows it to be used for the treatment of nausea and motion sickness, while most other antihistamines cannot.
"So there was this unique thing about this particular antihistamine," Gohil noted. "And it is well-tolerated so the toxicological profile is very acceptable, so it doesn't have to be sold under strict regulations."
"With that kind of profile, when we saw it in our drug screen we got excited about it because we could see that it decreases cellular oxygen consumption or respiration," he said. "We started trying to figure out the mechanism and to see if it could have any clinical benefit and application."
Gohil said for certain diseases like stroke, heart attack and some neurological diseases, previous medical research has shown that if mitochondrial respiration can be turned down, it could be beneficial for treatment.
"The way many of the cells die during the heart attack or stroke is connected to mitochondrial respiration, so the idea was that if you can turn down the respiration, then it will prevent death," he said. "This is exactly what we found when used meclizine in models of heart attack, stroke and even Huntington disease. We have a drug with a known clinical use and have identified a new biochemical target within the cells, so that opens up new applications."
He said when he and colleagues started studying the mechanism of this drug in terms of how it is inhibiting mitochondrial respiration, they made a couple of fundamental observations. "First, when we add this drug to the whole cells, we see reduced respiration, not rapidly but slowly," he said.
The researchers then added the drug to isolated mitochondria, which is the main site of respiration within the cells.
"But we did not see an effect, so that gave us the idea that this drug may not be directly targeting one of the enzymes of mitochondria which are required for or participates in consuming oxygen," Gohil said. "We used that clue to figure out how non-mitochondrial pathways could be targeted by this drug."
He used an unbiased metabolic profiling approach, a new technology that gives a snapshot of metabolite levels before and after the treatment of a drug so researchers can get an idea of how this drug is perturbing these metabolites.
"Through metabolic profiling, we found one particular metabolite - phosphoethanolamine - was in fact 'going through the roof' within a few hours of the treatment," Gohil said. "We got excited about that."
He explained that phosphoethanolamine is an intermediate in a biosynthetic pathway of a common phospholipid that forms the membrane around the cells. It is present in all living matter from the lower organisms such as bacteria all the way to humans. Thus, finding that the metabolite that was elevated when cells were treated with meclizine indicated a link between this pathway, or metabolite, and respiration.
"Our research showed that if we just take this metabolite and directly add it to mitochondria, it actually inhibits the respiration," Gohil said. "The reason we could use the drug for infectious disease or cancer is not because it inhibits respiration but because it inhibits a phospholipid biosynthetic enzyme that is required to form the building blocks of membranes."
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Old drug may teach new tricks in treating infectious diseases, cancer
COLLEGE STATION Meclizine, an over-the-counter drug used for decades to treat nausea and motion sickness, has the potential for new uses to treat certain infectious diseases and some forms of cancer, according to Dr. Vishal M. Gohil, Texas A&M AgriLife Research biochemist.
"Clearly this drug has many potential new applications," Gohil said. "And now that we know its new target within the cell, we can start to explore ways of using it to treat other diseases. We can 'repurpose' this drug."
The research on meclizine appears in the current online version of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
"We found a particular enzyme which is inhibited by meclizine has been proposed (in other research) to be a drug target for the treatment of many diseases, including infectious diseases like malaria and African sleeping sickness," Gohil said. "And this pathway has also been proposed to be a critical pathway for the proliferation of cancer cells."
Gohil said his research, which included collaboration with scientists at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Rochester and the University of Guelph, had already shown that the drug also works in the treatment of heart attack and stroke.
Meclizine is an antihistamine, synthesized in the 1950s and later found to be useful for treating nausea, motion sickness and vertigo.
Gohil, who also is an assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University, said he started working on the compound when he identified it in a drug-screening experiment aimed at discovering compounds or drugs that inhibit mitochondrial respiration, a process that provides energy to cells.
Mitochondria are structures found in the cells of all eukaryotes, organisms with one or more cells containing a nuclei and organelles that perform specific tasks. Enclosed in membrane, mitochondria are responsible for supplying the cell with energy and are connected to a cell's life and death.
"When that drug screen identified meclizine, it was a bit of a surprise for us, because this compound had been in the market for several years and had never been linked to mitochondrial respiration," Gohil said. "It's a known drug, and was known to target a few of the molecules within the cell."
But unlike other classes of antihistamine, he noted, meclizine has a unique property which allows it to be used for the treatment of nausea and motion sickness, while most other antihistamines cannot.
"So there was this unique thing about this particular antihistamine," Gohil noted. "And it is well-tolerated so the toxicological profile is very acceptable, so it doesn't have to be sold under strict regulations."
"With that kind of profile, when we saw it in our drug screen we got excited about it because we could see that it decreases cellular oxygen consumption or respiration," he said. "We started trying to figure out the mechanism and to see if it could have any clinical benefit and application."
Gohil said for certain diseases like stroke, heart attack and some neurological diseases, previous medical research has shown that if mitochondrial respiration can be turned down, it could be beneficial for treatment.
"The way many of the cells die during the heart attack or stroke is connected to mitochondrial respiration, so the idea was that if you can turn down the respiration, then it will prevent death," he said. "This is exactly what we found when used meclizine in models of heart attack, stroke and even Huntington disease. We have a drug with a known clinical use and have identified a new biochemical target within the cells, so that opens up new applications."
He said when he and colleagues started studying the mechanism of this drug in terms of how it is inhibiting mitochondrial respiration, they made a couple of fundamental observations. "First, when we add this drug to the whole cells, we see reduced respiration, not rapidly but slowly," he said.
The researchers then added the drug to isolated mitochondria, which is the main site of respiration within the cells.
"But we did not see an effect, so that gave us the idea that this drug may not be directly targeting one of the enzymes of mitochondria which are required for or participates in consuming oxygen," Gohil said. "We used that clue to figure out how non-mitochondrial pathways could be targeted by this drug."
He used an unbiased metabolic profiling approach, a new technology that gives a snapshot of metabolite levels before and after the treatment of a drug so researchers can get an idea of how this drug is perturbing these metabolites.
"Through metabolic profiling, we found one particular metabolite - phosphoethanolamine - was in fact 'going through the roof' within a few hours of the treatment," Gohil said. "We got excited about that."
He explained that phosphoethanolamine is an intermediate in a biosynthetic pathway of a common phospholipid that forms the membrane around the cells. It is present in all living matter from the lower organisms such as bacteria all the way to humans. Thus, finding that the metabolite that was elevated when cells were treated with meclizine indicated a link between this pathway, or metabolite, and respiration.
"Our research showed that if we just take this metabolite and directly add it to mitochondria, it actually inhibits the respiration," Gohil said. "The reason we could use the drug for infectious disease or cancer is not because it inhibits respiration but because it inhibits a phospholipid biosynthetic enzyme that is required to form the building blocks of membranes."
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