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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Sarah Murnaghan, 10, wakes from coma after lung transplant

48 minutes ago

Murnaghan family / Murnaghan family

Sarah Murnaghan, 10, has woken from a coma after receiving a double lung transplant.

A 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who was given a double-lung transplant after a national debate about organ donation has come out of a coma, according to reports late Friday.

Sarah Murnaghan was able to respond to questions, a family spokesperson told NBC10.com.

She received her new lungs on June 12, after spending three months at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with end-stage cystic fibrosis.

Sarah, of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, became the subject of national media headlines when her parents sued over national transplant rules that place children behind adolescents and adults on the list for adult lungs.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson intervened, ordering that Sarah be put on the adult list, where the urgency of her case led to a match days later.

The transplant isn't a cure for cystic fibrosis, but it can extend her life by years.

Family spokesperson Tracy Simon said Sarah woke from the coma on Friday and was responding to simple questions by nodding to indicate yes or no, The Associated Press reported.

Simon added Sarah was doing well but was frustrated by her inability to speak.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2da4bb8e/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Chealth0Csarah0Emurnaghan0E10A0Ewakes0Ecoma0Eafter0Elung0Etransplant0E6C10A4180A83/story01.htm

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What to consider when assessing alternative investments | Investing ...

The financial crisis of 2008 was the impetus many investors required to look beyond the traditional asset classes of publicly-traded equities and bonds and into the world of alternative investments. Others, battered by the volatility in the stock market, chose to liquidate their equities in favour of significantly adding to their bond holdings.

After all, bonds are generally considered to be the conservative part of a portfolio, providing dependable income while preserving capital along the way. And, for the past four years, those bonds holdings have provided excellent total returns, appreciating considerably as interest rates made their historic decline towards zero.

But bonds in the past six weeks have been subjected to enormous volatility. As a result, many pundits are declaring that the 30-year secular bull market in bonds is over, and predicting a bond bear market (i.e., steadily rising rates) that will last into the foreseeable future.

With the writing so clearly on the wall, investors once again have a choice to make: Do they stick with their bonds and simply wait for increasing rates to impair their portfolio, like death by a thousand cuts? Do they reallocate to equities at a time when many observers see storm clouds on the horizon? Or do they revisit the universe of alternative investments, whether real estate, private equity, managed futures, hedge funds or structured products?

While alternative asset classes and investment strategies dramatically vary in their attributes during different economic scenarios, the elements that must be assessed when considering adding these investments to a portfolio are quite portable.

Some are quantitative, while others are more qualitative in nature. Here are those that seem to come up more than others during this process.

Liquidity

With a few exceptions, most alternative investments require investors to shoulder at least some degree of illiquidity, whether monthly, quarterly or even over many years.

If there is a portion of your portfolio that you have no plans to access for many years (or even during your lifetime), giving up some liquidity in exchange for lower volatility and more predictable returns may well be worthwhile.

This is not to say that large percentages of your assets should be invested in funds that tie up your money for years at a time, but rather that than a ?liquidity at any cost? approach will work against you in these uncertain times.

Recognizability

If you?ve ever owned a rental property or run your own business, you are already an alternative investor. Real estate and private equity are two of the most recognizable alternatives, and are often the perfect way to ease your way into this space.

If you recognize your investments as something understandable, you will be more comfortable with them as you move away from stocks and bonds.

Complexity

There is a world of difference between the words ?simple? and ?easy? when it comes to investments, because many of the simplest models are the most difficult to execute.

For example, an alternative private debt investment fund is very simple: lend money to borrowers, take a management fee and pay the difference to investors. To run such a fund profitably, however, is very difficult and requires significant experience and expertise.

Even though you must always satisfy yourself that investment managers have the necessary skills, it is often a good start to find strategies that are not overly complex. Complex strategies (such as those that use structured products, which are designed to provide attractive tax-efficient and predictable returns) may be suitable for you, but your comfort level might be higher with models that are more easily defined.

Transparency

Many institutional investors following the financial crisis mandated rules requiring they be advised in real time of their specific holdings in alternative investment vehicles. This allows them to judge what risks they are taking across their entire portfolio and ensure they are not offside on any aspect of their investment policies.

While individual investors would generally not be able to benefit from this sort of disclosure, they can benefit from the spirit of this approach by avoiding opaque investment strategies that provide investors little information about what they actually own.

There will be times that investment managers require a degree of secrecy in order to capitalize on opportunities. With this important caveat, investing in ?trust me? strategies is not for first-time alternative investors.

It is not without a degree of trepidation that most investors approach alternative investments for the first time. But because these individuals are running out of suitable options in their traditional investments, they must find a way to overcome these reservations in order to benefit from the many positive characteristics that alternatives provide.

David Kaufman is president of Westcourt Capital Corp., a portfolio manager specializing in traditional and alternative asset classes and investment strategies. He can be contacted at?drk@westcourtcapital.com.

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/21/what-to-consider-when-assessing-alternative-investments/

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Graphene-based system could lead to improved information processing

June 21, 2013 ? Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials -- the kind often used for data storage -- with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.

The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.

The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.

The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.

The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.

The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.

Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.

Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.

Dimitri Basov, a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego who was not connected with this research, says the MIT team "proposed a very interesting plasmonic structure, suitable for operation in the technologically significant [terahertz] range. ? I am confident that many research groups will try to implement these devices."

Basov cautions, however, "The key issue, as in all of plasmonics, is losses. Losses need to be thoroughly explored and understood."

In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/electronics/~3/4eQl1-5Fu_M/130621095620.htm

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Saturday, June 22, 2013

US: ball is in Taliban's court for Afghan talks

DOHA, Qatar (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday urged the Taliban not to let differences on names and flags scuttle hopes for talks on ending 12 years of war in Afghanistan, saying the opening of an office in Qatar was an important step toward reconciliation that should not be squandered.

The announcement that U.S. officials and Taliban would begin formal peace talks in the newly opened office raised hopes the long-stalled process would finally get underway, but the plans quickly ran aground when Afghan President Hamid Karzai objected to the wording of a sign with the name of the former Taliban regime and their former flag.

A Qatar Foreign Ministry statement said the Taliban had violated an agreement to call the office the "Political Bureau of the Taliban Afghan in Doha." The Obama administration also said the U.S. and Qatar never had agreed to allow the Taliban to use that name on the door.

The Taliban have removed the sign and lowered their flag but are divided over whether to keep them down.

Kerry, in the Qatari capital for separate talks on Syria's civil war, said the Americans and the Afghan government's High Peace Council were ready, and he encouraged the Taliban to remain in the process.

"Nothing comes easily in this endeavor, we understand that. The road ahead will be difficult, no question about it, if there is a road ahead," he said at a press conference.

He said the U.S. hoped the opening of the office would be "an important step in reconciliation, if possible" but added "It's really up to the Taliban to make that choice."

"It remains to be seen in this very first test whether or not the Taliban are prepared to do their part," he said.

Meanwhile, James Dobbins, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived in Doha on Saturday, suggesting the U.S. remains hopeful about the talks despite the recent flap.

Shaheen Suhail, the Taliban's spokesman in Doha, told The Associated Press that his office had received no word about when a meeting with Dobbins might be held.

Suhail also prevailed on all sides to calm the tensions over what he deemed a secondary issue.

"Everyone should save the process. Give a chance to the process. In one day everything cannot be resolved," he said in a telephone interview. "This is a very secondary thing and not important. I am also surprised that it should derail the process."

Karzai temporarily suspended participation in talks Tuesday angered by a sign identifying the office as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name used by the Taliban during its five-year rule that ended in 2001 after the Islamic militant movement was ousted by the U.S. invasion for its support of al-Qaida. The Afghan president also suspended separate negotiations with the United States over a security agreement aimed at providing a framework for some U.S. forces to remain in Afghanistan after the Americans and their NATO allies withdraw combat forces by the end of 2014.

The Taliban spokesman said the spat has frustrated and angered some within the militant movement who said the Taliban have been meeting with representatives of dozens of countries and holding secret one-on-one meetings with members of Karzai's High Peace Council on several occasions, always under the banner of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

"There is an internal discussion right now and much anger about it but we have not yet decided what action to take," told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "But I think it weakens the process from the very beginning."

In Kabul, a member of the government's negotiation team said it was still prepared to begin talks in Qatar and called the removal of the sign and flag was a positive sign.

High Peace Council member Shahzada Shahid told the AP Saturday that it was too early to say when members of the council would travel to Qatar for talks. He also welcomed the participation of countries in the international coalition in Afghanistan and said they would have their own issues to discuss.

"Peace is very important and vital for us so we will take all measures for it," he said.

Meanwhile, as the "internal talks" continued over the sign, the Taliban were still cobbling together a negotiating team, the spokesman said.

The Taliban already have agreed to hand over U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in Afghanistan in 2009, in exchange for five Taliban members held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Suhail also said that a cease-fire and women's rights could be part of negotiations.

"It can be part of the agenda and be discussed, also foreign troops in Afghanistan after 2014 can be discussed as part of the agenda as well as the general concerns of the Afghan people," he said. "How can we achieve all those things if even from the first day there is so much public criticism?"

____

Gannon reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and David Rising contributed from Kabul.

___

Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be reached at www.twitter.com/kathygannon

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-ball-talibans-court-afghan-talks-142122623.html

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Chasing After Allosaurus

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Chasing After Allosaurus
A little more than a year ago, in the corner of a Salt Lake City tattoo parlor spattered with sci-fi ephemera and fantasy art, I watched as artist Jon McAffee inked an Allosaurus onto my arm. The bloody art was a celebration of a dream realized and a promise to myself.

Source: National Geographic
Posted on: Thursday, Jun 20, 2013, 8:13am
Views: 16

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128731/Chasing_After_Allosaurus

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Friday, June 21, 2013

Impossible Instant Lab mobile photo booth ships August 29th for $299

There's a certain irony to the Impossible Instant Lab taking a long time to develop, but we won't mind (much) now that it has a solid release date. The instant photo kit ships to stores on August 29th, when it will cost the same $299 that The Impossible Project promised during its crowdfunding campaign. Compatibility hasn't changed much since then -- you'll need to use at least an iPhone 4 or fourth-generation iPod touch, and there's no immediate support for devices using Android or other platforms. If that's no barrier, however, you can bring your digital photos to the analog world in a matter of weeks.

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals