Gallimaufry

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...l-street-job-one-year-after-jeopardy-win.html



IBM’s Watson Computer Gets a Wall Street Job
By Beth Jinks
March 6, 2012

International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” a year ago, will soon be advising Wall Street on risks, portfolios and clients.

Citigroup Inc., the third-largest U.S. lender, is Watson’s first financial services client, IBM said yesterday. It will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.

IBM expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting Watson to work. The technology giant has already sold Watson to health-care clients, helping WellPoint Inc. and Seton Health Family analyze data to improve care. IBM executives say Watson’s skills -- understanding and processing natural language, consulting vast volumes of unstructured information, and accurately answering questions with humanlike cognition -- are also well suited for the finance industry.

Financial services is the “next big one for us,” said Manoj Saxena, the man responsible for finding Watson work. IBM is confident that with a little training, the quiz-show star that can read and understand 200 million pages in three seconds can make money for IBM by helping financial firms identify risks, rewards and customer wants mere human experts may overlook.

Banks spent about $400 billion on information technology last year, said Michael Versace, head of risk research at International Data Corp.’s Financial Insights, which has done research for IBM.

Cloud-Based Service
Watson the financial assistant will be delivered as a cloud-based service and earn a percentage of the additional revenue and cost savings it is able to help financial institutions realize. Watson, including its work in the health- care and finance industries, will contribute “a portion” of IBM’s target of $16 billion of analytics revenues in 2015, Saxena said, and that portion will “have a B next to it.”

Watson may add $2.65 billion in revenue in 2015...

IBM, the world’s biggest computer-services provider, reported revenue of $107 billion in 2011 and earnings of $13.06 a share. The company ended 2011 with $11.9 billion in cash.

IBM shares closed above $200 for the first time yesterday, factoring in stock splits. The stock fell 0.8 percent to $199 at 9:40 a.m. New York time today.

Language of Wall Street
Watson “can give an edge” in finance, said Stephen Baker, author of books The Numerati and Final Jeopardy, a Watson biography. “It can go through newspaper articles, documents, SEC filings, and try to make some sense out of them, put them into a context banks are interested in, like risk.”

In addition to Citigroup, Armonk, New York-based IBM has been working with financial institutions teaching Watson the language of Wall Street, and adding content including regulatory announcements, news and social media feeds. IBM won’t say which other institutions Watson is already working with.

“It’s not selling them software, it’s selling them outcomes,” Saxena said in a phone interview.

Watson offers a “more global” picture by looking beyond financial data, Saxena said. For example, Watson can comb 10-Ks, prospectuses, loan performances and earnings quality while also uncovering sentiment and news not in the usual metrics before offering securities portfolio recommendations. It can also monitor trading, news sources and Facebook to help a treasurer manage foreign exchange risk.

‘Huge Marketing Edge’
Some of the biggest financial institutions have already built big data centers. IBM is competing with most other major technology companies to sell them tools to analyze and use accumulated information, Versace said.

“Apparently Citi gets it -- analytics is the new core in competitive banking,” Versace said. “The ability to efficiently and effectively exploit big data, advanced modeling, text analytics, in memory and real-time decisions across channels and operations will distinguish those that thrive in uncertain and uneven markets, from those that fumble.”

Watson gives IBM “a huge marketing edge” in the race among tech giants including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to obtain intelligence for businesses by teaching machines to understand sentences and paragraphs rather than searching for single words or phrases, said author Baker.

Parts of Watson could already be combined with other IBM technologies to help banks with regulatory compliance by surveying internal documents and flagging those that seem amiss, Baker said. Watson was designed to be loaded with information rather than grapple with a live streaming feed, making it likely IBM will partner it with other technologies.

Applications Beyond Banking
Beyond banks and other financial institutions, and insurance companies, Watson may have applications for telecommunications companies, and perhaps even call centers, said Saxena, who joined IBM when it acquired his company Webify Solutions Inc. in 2006.

IBM plans to use Watson in financial services “mostly for portfolio risk management, they’re not going to do stock picking,” CLSA’s Maguire said in a Feb. 17 phone interview. “They think that Watson can make a difference.” Still, Watson isn’t perfect. It is weak in languages other than English, and its processing of social media streams from platforms including Facebook and Twitter can be sluggish. The lag is “getting shorter”, Saxena said.

Precise Answers
A year ago last month, about 15 million viewers watched Watson beat former Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter -- a highly publicized victory in artificial intelligence that IBM always aimed to apply to the business world.

Watson had to learn how people speak and write, and evaluate its level of understanding, said Eric Brown, a member of the team that built him in an IBM research facility in New York. Precise answers delivered with confidence distinguish Watson from Web searches, enabling the technology to advise real-life decision makers, Brown said.

“I’m sure they use all this stuff internally to manage their own portfolio,” said CLSA’s Maguire. “IBM’s treasury is bigger than a lot of trading desks. If they went into asset management they would kick ass, but that’s not what they do.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...l-street-job-one-year-after-jeopardy-win.html

 

[trysail]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265832373170456.html




Tennis, Without All the Tension
Pros Are Stringing Their Rackets Looser Than Ever—and So Far, Nobody's Complaining
By KRISTINA DELL

As the 2012 tennis season arrives in full flower this month with tournaments at Indian Wells and Miami, the game has settled into a new status quo that nobody could have predicted.

All the recent advancements in racket technology are pushing pros to try a trick that's extremely rare, if not unprecedented, in tennis history: They're playing with rackets whose strings are about as taut as a bowl of pad thai.

At tournaments, stringers say an increasing number of daredevil tour players, most of whom have compact, powerful groundstrokes, have started to ask them to shave as many as 20 pounds off their string tensions to take their rackets down to the low 30-pound and high 40-pound range. Those sorts of numbers were oddities a few years back when lively natural gut strings stretched into the high 60s (or occasionally even reached the 70s) reigned supreme on tour.

Bethanie Mattek-Sands, currently the third-highest-ranked American woman, strings her rackets at 38 to 40 pounds; doubles specialist David Martin is at 31 pounds and young American Jack Sock asks for 40.

The lowest request from the U.S. Open this past year: Filippo Volandri's rackets at an astonishingly slack 26 pounds. "A lot of players are going down in tension," says Joel Disbro, Wilson stringing tour manager who runs the on-site stringing operations at the U.S. and Australian Opens.

Racket strings have more punch when they're strung loosely because the ball dwells on the string bed longer, creating a trampoline effect. Years ago, when players used natural gut strings, this kind of slingshot power came at the expense of control—so most players opted for tighter strings and pinpoint placement.

Today, with the new generation of synthetic strings, players are discovering they can control that added power with all the spin the new, slicker strings naturally give them. "Players can actually control the ball better at lower tensions when they use poly strings and have a heavy topspin game," says Roman Prokes, a technician who strings for Andy Roddick and Caroline Wozniacki. "It's exactly the opposite of what we are used to

For tennis fans, a famously cranky lot, most technological advances are met with dark predictions about what might happen to the game and how people will abandon the sport in droves. But in this case, the lower tensions seem to be helping. More players are figuring out their racket sweet spots, which could be a factor in stiffening competition. And more pros can knock the fuzz off the ball now while keeping it in the court with more topspin and control.

"For sure the poly string allows you to string way lower [in tension] and still get that unique combination of power, spin and control," Justin Gimelstob, a Tennis Channel commentator and former player, wrote in an email. "The most unique part of the new strings is the way players are able to accelerate so violently and bring the ball up and down so severely. It's one of the reasons it's so tough to attack the net because in a way the dimensions of the court have been altered. Angles now exist that didn't years ago."

If there's a model for the era of lower-tension tennis, it's Roger Federer. The meticulous Swiss comes to the court armed with nine rackets strung at three different tensions ranging from 48 to 52 pounds in the vertical main strings (and 3.3 pounds lower for his cross strings)—numbers he picks with his stringer the night before. If it's hot out and he's playing a monster hitter, he'll bring more rackets on the tighter side.

Federer almost never restrings a racket during a match. He usually burns through seven or eight sticks during a five-setter, often switching from tension to tension, and generally going tighter as the match progresses, says his stringer Nate Ferguson, owner of Priority One, the company many top pros hire to handle their stringing.

In 2004, Federer was stringing his rackets at 55 pounds, which was considered ultra-loose for that time. While stringers say he already has the lowest tension of any of the men in the top 10, stringers say he's gone down even more.

Ferguson of Priority One said Federer uses vertical main strings, made of gut, strung at 49 pounds and a synthetic brand called Luxilon Alu Rough in the cross strings at only 46.2 pounds.

Stringers say Serena and Venus Williams along with Kim Clijsters are among the few top players left still playing with a full racket head of gut. Most pros now use at least some of the newer polyester-like monofilament string often called "polyester" or "poly" for at least some of their strings.

It's these high-tech poly strings that allow pros to swing for the fences and have the balls drop in because of the bite and hyper topspin the strings generate. Pros have always varied their string tension a little based on the court surface, weather conditions and their opponent's style of play. But five pounds used to be considered a big step.

Today, Prokes says he recommends that players go down in tension by at least 10% when switching to a polyester string, a move that, he says, puts less stress on the arm. Andy Roddick has lowered his tension gradually from 63 and 64 pounds a few years back to 55 and 56 pounds at the U.S. Open, according to Prokes, his stringer.

"People are used to seeing 60 pounds and then you suggest stringing at 45 pounds and they think it's crazy. But it's easier on everybody's shoulders and just works better," Prokes said.

In 2008, doubles specialist Leander Paes was struggling with his game and watching his ranking slip. His coach, Rick Leach, a former No. 1 doubles player, suggested loosening up when playing with polyester strings. Leach convinced Paes to lower his tension from 61 pounds to an ultra-slack 47.

"It really changed his game and he had a resurgence in his career," says Leach. "He's able to get more pop on his serve and hits a heavier ball so he can hang with the young guys." By early 2009, Paes' ranking had climbed to No. 5 and today the 38-year-old is ranked No. 7.

Jean-Christophe Verbourg, international tour director at Babolat, isn't so sure that poly strings need lower tensions. "There's no rule that you have to decrease the tension," he says.

Some pros and coaches say modern, deadened strings increase the stress on a player's arm if strung too tightly, bringing more shock through the strings, up the racket and into the body.

"The string today doesn't give at all and that is the reason why we're seeing a lot of wrist and shoulder injuries," says Nick Bollettieri, coach of 10 No. 1 players.

Not everyone is obsessed with string tension.

Rafael Nadal walks on court with five or six rackets in his bag all strung at 55 pounds. He typically uses only two or three of them and rarely changes tension. He's thought to be the least picky of the top three players when it comes to racket tension.

Novak Djokovic likes his strings around a more-traditional 60 pounds, while James Blake has his new Luxilon Alu strings pulled to 68 pounds on hard courts and 65 on clay.

But if there's any one general effect of the string-tension question, it's that players are more focused on their strings than perhaps ever before.

Wozniacki strings her Yonnex frames between 55 and 57 pounds, depending on the weather, down from the 63-pound tension she used to use.

She's so picky about getting it right, she never steps foot on court without a string gauge.

In her fourth-round win against Svetlana Kuznetsova at last year's U.S. open, Wozniacki pulled out the gauge several times to check her tension. "The racket I played with felt loose and that's why I changed it," she said at the time. "I always check new rackets."



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265832373170456.html

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-poorer-to-lie-or-cheat-researchers-find.html



Self-Interest Spurs Society’s ‘Elite’ to Lie, Cheat on Tasks, Study Finds
By Elizabeth Lopatto
February 28, 2012

Are society’s most noble actors found within society’s nobility?

That question spurred Paul Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, to explore whether higher social class is linked to higher ideals, he said in a telephone interview.

The answer Piff found after conducting seven different experiments is: no. The pursuit of self-interest is a “fundamental motive among society’s elite, and the increased want associated with greater wealth and status can promote wrongdoing,” Piff and his colleagues wrote yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The “upper class,” as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take candy from children, lie in negotiation, cheat to raise their odds of winning a prize and endorse unethical behavior at work, the research found. The solution, Piff said, is to find a way to increase empathy among wealthier people.

“It’s not that the rich are innately bad, but as you rise in the ranks -- whether as a person or a nonhuman primate -- you become more self-focused,” Piff said. “You can change that by reminding upper-class people of the needs of others. That may not be their default, but have them do it is sufficient to increase their patterns of altruistic behavior.”

That theory will be the basis of his next study. Piff is curious to know how to change patterns of greed and selfishness when they emerge.

Ethics Courses
Previous research has shown that students who take economics classes are more likely to describe greed as good. Pairing ethics courses with economics may be beneficial, Piff said.

“It might be as simple as not only stressing individual performance, but the value of cooperation and improving the welfare of others,” he said. “That goes a long way.”

In the research reported yesterday, the experiments suggest at least some wealthier people “perceive greed as positive and beneficial,” probably as a result of education, personal independence and the resources they have to deal with potentially negative consequences, the authors wrote.

While the tests measured only “minor infractions,” that factor made the results “even more surprising,” Piff said.

One experiment invited 195 adults recruited using Craigslist to play a game in which a computer “rolled dice” for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate. The numbers each participant rolled were the same; anyone self-reporting a total higher than 12 was lying about their score. Those in wealthier groups were found to be more likely to fib, Piff said.

Risks of Cheating
“A $50 prize is a measly sum to people who make $250,000 a year,” he said in a telephone interview. “So why are they more inclined to cheat? For a person with lower socioeconomic status, that $50 would get you more, and the risks are small.”

Poorer participants may be less likely to cheat because they must rely more on their community to get by, and thus are more likely adhere to community standards, Piff said. By comparison, “upper-class individuals are more self-focused, they privilege themselves over others, and they engage in self- interested patterns of behavior,” he said.

In the traffic tests, about one-third of drivers in higher- status cars cut off other drivers at an intersection watched by the researchers, about double those in less costly cars. Additionally, almost half of the more expensive cars didn’t yield when a pedestrian entered the crosswalk while all of the lowest-status cars let the pedestrian cross. These experiments involved 426 vehicles.

Employment Test
Another test asked 108 adults found through Amazon.com Inc.’s work-recruiting website Mechanical Turk to assume the role of an employer negotiating a salary with someone seeking long-term employment. They were told several things about the job, including that it would soon be eliminated. Upper-class individuals were more likely not to mention to the job-seeker the temporary nature of the position, the research found.

“Support for free-market capitalism will collapse if those who do well don’t do good,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “Rapacious, intolerant, nonempathetic capitalism that says lie, cheat, steal, it’s only the bottom line that matters -- aside from being morally repugnant, it’s got a dim future.”

Study Design Criticized
Meredith McGinley, an assistant professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh who wasn’t involved in the study, was critical of how some of the experiments were designed.

The car test complicates the results because having a flashy car doesn’t necessarily mean the driver is wealthy, said McGinley, who studies positive social behavior. In the experiment involving candy, the participants were told they could have it even though children were waiting for it. They may have felt they were doing nothing wrong, she said.

In the candy test, 129 undergraduates were manipulated to view themselves as wealthy or poor. They were then presented with a jar of individually wrapped candy, which researchers said would go to children in a nearby lab, though the participants could take some if they wanted. The undergraduates believing themselves to be upper income took more than those believing themselves to be low income, the study found.

Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, wasn’t surprised by the results, he said.

Greed ‘on Upswing’
“Greed has been on the upswing for 20 years,” Gordon said in a telephone interview. “Wealth or power that comes with high socioeconomic status means you are indeed enabled to ignore other people and might think that rules that apply to other people don’t apply to you.”

Gordon, though, thinks the research has its limits. It isn’t as much about wealth, he said, as it is about greed, a behavior that can be changed.

The very wealthy, who “tend to drive 8-year-old cars” and “don’t wear logos,” may offer a very different profile, he said, suggesting that the group targeted by Piff’s experiments with cars are more likely the “nouveau riche.”

To be sure, Piff and his colleagues said there are exceptions to the associations they found, pointing to Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., who has pledged the majority of his holdings to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities.

Less wealthy individuals also can behave badly, they wrote, noting the relationship between poverty and violent crime in previous research.

The study urged further research to determine the “boundaries” of bad behavior spurred by greed. Adam Smith, the 18th century author of “The Wealth of Nations,” may provide an example, as his first book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” was about ethics.

“A long time ago, you couldn’t leave the university without having a course in ethics,” Caplan said. “One of the things college should do is provide you with the moral framework to operate in a capitalist society. When people ask about the value of philosophy, I point them there.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-poorer-to-lie-or-cheat-researchers-find.html

 

[trysail]

Shire to Acquire FerroKin BioSciences, Inc., and its Phase 2 Iron Chelator Treatment

DUBLIN, March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire FerroKin BioSciences, Inc., for an upfront payment of $100 million, payable in cash at closing, plus potential post-closing milestone payments of up to $225 million, depending upon the achievement of certain clinical development, regulatory and net sales targets.
•A strategic step in building Shire's hematology business (which already includes Xagrid and a growing development pipeline)
•Adds a differentiated product in development (iron chelator FBS0701), with global rights, in a global market currently worth over $900 million and growing(1)
•Serves chronic patient need for treatment of iron overload following numerous blood transfusions. Excess iron in vital organs such as the liver and heart increases the risk of organ failure and is the principal cause of death in transfusion-dependent patients(2)
•Consistent with Shire strategy of developing and commercializing differentiated specialist products prescribed by specialist physicians (hematologists/ hematologist-oncologists) served by a small sales force
•FBS0701 will be developed to demonstrate clinical efficacy and an attractive safety profile relative to currently approved chelating agents:
•Global filing planned for indications for Myelodysplastic Syndrome and hemoglobinopathies initially
•Phase 2 studies underway with additional trials planned
•Potential launch as early as 2016

Shire's Specialty Pharmaceuticals Senior Vice President, Hematology, Ross Murdoch says:

"There remains a significant unmet need for a once-a-day, oral iron chelator in a convenient dosage form for the treatment of transfusional iron overload with a better safety profile than currently available treatments(2). We believe FBS0701 has the potential to meet that need. We hope to use our expertise in hematology coupled with our proven ability to progress products through the development pipeline to bring FBS0701 to the global marketplace.
This acquisition marks an important step for Shire in building a business that serves the growing needs of specialty hematologists and their patients."

FerroKin BioSciences' key employees, including Founder and CEO, Dr. Hugh Young Rienhoff, Jr. will provide consulting services to Shire during the transition period. "An important factor for FerroKin BioSciences in agreeing to this transaction was Shire's drive, capability and vision to bring new products to the hematology market that promise to raise the standard of care for patients. In Shire's hands, FBS0701 has greater potential to fulfill that promise," said Dr. Rienhoff.

The closing of the acquisition is subject to customary conditions, including (i)
adoption of the Merger Agreement by a required proportion of FerroKin's equityholders; (ii) holders of no more than 2% of FerroKin's capital stock having exercised or being entitled to exercise appraisal rights under Delaware law and (iii) the absence of a material adverse effect on FerroKin BioSciences.

About FBS0701

FBS0701 is a once-daily oral capsule in development for the treatment of iron overload due to chronic blood transfusions in adults and children. FBS0701 has received Orphan Product designation from both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. FerroKin BioSciences has completed four Phase 1 clinical trials to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and iron clearing activity of FBS0701 in healthy volunteers and patients. Phase 2 dose-ranging studies in adults and children are ongoing. Initial data from the adult study, presented at the American Society of Hematology in December, supports the potential for FBS0701 as an effective iron chelator with a favorable safety profile.

About Iron Overload

Although iron is an element essential for life - the typical adult human contains 1,000-4,000 mg of iron - the body has no means to eliminate excess iron. Repeated transfusions can result in the accumulation of iron in key organs, compromising their normal function. Progressive iron overload can eventually lead to organ failure, particularly the heart and liver.

The need for repeated transfusions arises in the setting of both hereditary and acquired anemias. The most common forms of congenital anemia are the hemoglobinopathies, a group of related anemias including alpha and beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease affecting hemoglobin production. Acquired anemias tend to occur later in life and represent a diverse collection of conditions characterized by impaired blood cell production collectively called Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS).

Seaview Securities LLC acted as financial adviser to FerroKin Biosciences, Inc.

(1) EvaluatePharma® consensus analyst estimates

(2) N Engl J Med 2011; 364:146-156 January 13, 2011

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shire-acquire-ferrokin-biosciences-inc-110000582.html

 

[trysail]

• 
  
  Question
  
  Your Response
  
  Correct Answer
  
  Score
  
  
  
  Composing about 78 percent of the air at sea level, what is the most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Nitrogen
  
  
  
  Nitrogen
  
  
  
  
  
  The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's observations of what organism formed the basis for the science of genetics?
  
  
  pea plants
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  pea plants
  
  
  
  
  
  What term, which means the maximum absolute value of a periodically varying quantity, does the "A" in AM radio broadcasting stand for?
  
  
  
  
  Amplitude
  
  
  
  
  
  Amplitude
  
  
  
  
  
  In 1989, the US postal service drew criticism from paleontologists for releasing a stamp with what obsolete genus name, which translates from Greek as "Thunder Lizard"?
  
  
  
  
  Brontosaurus
  
  
  
  
  
  Brontosaurus
  
  
  
  
  
  Organic chemistry is the study of compounds that contain what element?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  carbon
  
  
  
  carbon
  
  
  
  
  
  How many nanometers are there in a centimeter?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  10,000,000
  
  
  
  10,000,000
  
  
  
  
  
  In physics, what letter is used to represent the speed of light in a vacuum?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  c
  
  
  
  c
  
  
  
  
  
  The only two known planets in our solar system that lack any moons are Venus and what other planet?
  
  
  Mars
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mercury
  
  
  
  
  
  What is the heaviest noble gas?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  radon
  
  radon
  
  
  
  
  
  Approximately how old is the Earth?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  4.5 billion years
  
  4.5 billion years
  
  
  
  
  
  Newton's First Law of Motion describes what phenomenon?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Kinetic energy: The energy of a body is equal to one half of the product of its mass times and velocity squared
  
  Inertia: An object not subject to any net external force moves at a constant velocity
  
  
  
  
  
  Mars is often described as the "Red Planet" because of the prevalence of what element mixed with oxygen on its surface?
  
  
  
  
  iron
  
  
  
  
  
  iron
  
  
  
  
  
  What combustible compound, the principal component of natural gas, has the chemical formula CH4?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  methane
  
  
  
  methane
  
  
  
  
  
  What word, which comes from a Greek term meaning "good kernel," describes an organism whose cells contain chromosomes inside a nucleus bounded by a membrane, as distinguished from bacterial forms of life?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  eukaryote
  
  eukaryote
  
  
  
  
  
  Named for a 19th century English physicist, what unit of measurement is defined as the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting to move an object through a distance of one meter?
  
  
  watt
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  joule
  
  
  
  
  
  The lowercase of what letter of the Greek alphabet is used to denote diverse phenomena such as the photon, the third angle in a triangle, the heat capacity ratio in thermodynamics, a type of high frequency electromagnetic radiation?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  gamma
  
  
  
  gamma
  
  
  
  
  
  What element, whose atomic number is 8, is the most abundant element in the earth's crust, making up almost half the crust's total weight?
  
  
  
  
  oxygen
  
  
  
  
  
  oxygen
  
  
  
  
  
  DNA contains adenine, cytosine, guanine, and what other nucleotide base, which is not found in RNA?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  thymine
  
  
  
  thymine
  
  
  
  
  
  What is the electrical resistance offered by a current-carrying element that produces a drop of one volt when a current of one ampere is flowing through it?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1 ohm
  
  
  
  1 ohm
  
  
  
  
  
  The letter K stands for what element on the periodic table?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  potassium
  
  
  
  potassium
  
  
  
  
  
  What term describes the single initial cell of a new organism that has been produced by means of sexual reproduction?
  
  
  zygote
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  zygote
  
  
  
  
  
  If you were to apply a net force of one Newton on a 200 gram object, what would be the acceleration of the object?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  0.2 meter per second squared
  
  
  
  5 meters per second squared
  
  
  
  
  
  Noting how light from objects that are moving away from the observer tend to shift to the red end of the spectrum, what scientist first established that the universe is expanding?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Edwin Hubble
  
  Edwin Hubble
  
  
  
  
  
  A temperature interval of one degree Fahrenheit is equal to an interval of 5/9ths of a degree Celsius. At about what temperature do the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales converge?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  -40 degrees
  
  
  
  -40 degrees
  
  
  
  
  
  The genus Australopithecus, one species of which was an ancestor of modern humans, first evolved on what continent?
  
  
  
  
  Africa
  
  
  
  
  
  Africa
  
  
  
  
  
  According to Bernoulli's Principle, an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in what?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  pressure
  
  pressure
  
  
  
  
  
  What is the name for the chemical compound that dentists use as "laughing gas" and that engineers and mechanics use as an oxidizer in rocketry and in motor racing?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  nitrous oxide
  
  
  
  nitrous oxide
  
  
  
  
  
  Geologists categorize rocks into three types: Igneous, sedimentary, and what?
  
  
  
  
  metamorphic
  
  
  
  
  
  metamorphic
  
  
  
  
  
  Two planets in our solar system are tied for having the lowest surface gravity – on each one you would weigh only about 38 percent of what you weigh on Earth. One of these planets is Mercury. What is the other one?
  
  
  Neptune
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mars
  
  
  
  
  
  What moon, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is the only known object in the solar system other than Earth that is known to have liquid on its surface?
  
  
  
  
  Titan
  
  
  
  
  
  Titan
  
  
  
  
  
  The 2006 demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet was precipitated by the discovery of what object orbiting beyond Pluto, believed to be 27 percent more massive than Pluto and named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Charon
  
  Eris
  
  
  
  
  
  In classical mechanics, what is defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity?
  
  
  
  
  acceleration
  
  
  
  
  
  momentum
  
  
  
  
  
  What word, which comes from Ancient Greek words meaning "entire" and "Earth," describes a supercontinent thought to have existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, about 250 million years ago?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Pangaea
  
  
  
  Pangaea
  
  
  
  
  
  What term for an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter gets its name from a line in James Joyce's 1939 novel "Finnegans Wake"?
  
  
  
  
  quark
  
  
  
  
  
  quark
  
  
  
  
  
  The mathematical constant e is defined as the base of the natural system of logarithms, having a numerical value of approximately what?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2.718
  
  2.718
  
  
  
  
  
  Protium, which consists of a single proton and no neutrons, is the most common isotope of what element?
  
  
  
  
  hydrogen
  
  
  
  
  
  hydrogen
  
  
  
  
  
  The lowercase version of what Greek letter is used to symbolize the coefficient of friction in classical physics?
  
  
  delta
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  mu
  
  
  
  
  
  What type of cell division in eukaryotic cells is divided into prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase?
  
  
  
  
  mitosis
  
  
  
  
  
  mitosis
  
  
  
  
  
  What word, which comes from a Greek term meaning "old stone" describes the era of human history, from about 2.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago, which was distinguished by the development of the first stone tools?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Paleolithic
  
  
  
  Paleolithic
  
  
  
  
  
  With an atomic number of 9, what chemical element is the lightest element of the halogen series? It gets its name from a Latin word meaning "stream" or "move freely."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  fluorine
  
  
  
  fluorine
  
  
  
  
  
  After the Moon, what is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Venus
  
  
  
  Venus
  
  
  
  
  
  According to the standard model of Big Bang cosmology, approximately how old is the Universe?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  14 billion years old
  
  
  
  14 billion years old
  
  
  
  
  
  What word, which derives from a Greek term meaning "unequal" or "bent," describes a triangle whose three sides are of unequal length?
  
  
  
  
  isosceles
  
  
  
  
  
  scalene
  
  
  
  
  
  Over half of the world's supply of what element, which gets its name from the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, is used in catalytic converters?
  
  
  
  
  palladium
  
  
  
  
  
  palladium
  
  
  
  
  
  In quantum mechanics, the physical constant used to describe the sizes of quanta – denoted as h – is named after what German physicist?
  
  
  
  
  Max Planck
  
  
  
  
  
  Max Planck
  
  
  
  
  
  Approximately how long does it take light from the sun to reach Earth?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Eight minutes
  
  
  
  Eight minutes
  
  
  
  
  
  In meteorology, what does the suffix -nimbus added to the name of a cloud indicate?
  
  
  
  
  It is at a high altitude
  
  
  
  
  
  It is precipitating
  
  
  
  
  
  What element, which has the atomic number 16 and is a bright yellow crystalline solid at room temperature, is referred to in the Bible as "brimstone"?
  
  
  
  
  sulfur
  
  
  
  
  
  sulfur
  
  
  
  
  
  The moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto all orbit what planet?
  
  
  
  
  Jupiter
  
  
  
  
  
  Jupiter
  
  
  
  
  
  What unit of measurement, which is equal to 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, did 18th-century steam engine entrepreneur James Watt come up with?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  horsepower
  
  horsepower
  
  
  
  
  
  

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/

 

[trysail]

...Earth is a complex, dynamic system we do not yet fully understand...

http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/

__________________


...we don't have the full understanding of the processes that contribute to the climate variability and change...

http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/focus-areas/climate-variability-and-change/

__________________

Prior to satellite data, most of what we have learned about the oceans had come from infrequent measurements collected from ships, buoys, and drifters. Ship-based oceanographers are limited to sampling the ocean in a relatively small area with often a great deal of difficulty. Data from ships, buoys, and drifters are not sufficient to characterize the conditions of the spatially diverse of the ocean....

...scientists can now investigate how the oceans affect the evolution of weather, hurricanes, and climate...

http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...urging-as-custom-barges-cut-set-up-costs.html



"Three times as pricey as electricity from coal..."

Offshore wind-power producers... are building custom ships at record rates to reduce the cost of the technology that’s three times as pricey as electricity from coal plants.

...sea-based wind power is among the most expensive forms of renewable energy, countries including the U.K. have promoted large-scale projects to add jobs, harness the stronger winds offshore and lessen the noise and visual impact of turbines on nearby communities.

Offshore wind costs about $232 a megawatt-hour of power generated, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That compares with about $80 for onshore wind, $62 for gas-fired plants and $77 for coal. The government supports the industry with incentives for power produced by renewable energy sources.

“If we gave away our turbine for free, we would not even be close to the price of coal,” said Jesper Moeller, head of offshore engineering for the wind division of turbine manufacturer Siemens AG...



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...urging-as-custom-barges-cut-set-up-costs.html

 

[trysail]

People who argue that speculation is generally destabilizing seldom realize that this is largely equivalent to saying that speculators lose money, since speculation can be destabilizing in general only if speculators on the average sell when the currency is low in price and buy when it is high.

-Milton Friedman​

In other words, trading should drive market prices toward equilibrium because successful traders— the only ones who will survive— must “buck the trend” by buying cheap while selling dear.

 

[trysail]

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=PG&t=5y&q=l&l=off&z=l&c=UL,NSRGY.PK,%5EGSPC&a=v&p=s&lang=en-US&region=US


http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=PG&t=my&q=l&l=off&z=l&c=UL,NSRGY.PK,%5EGSPC&a=v&p=s&lang=en-US&region=US



​

Unilever
Nestle
ProctorAndGamble
Proctor

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...seen-transforming-plastics-industry-tech.html



Honeywell Breakthrough Seen Transforming Plastics Industry
By Thomas Black
April 25, 2012

Honeywell International Inc. has discovered a one-step process to convert household natural gas into a plastics raw material. The implications are far-reaching.

The technology in time could ease a glut of natural gas from U.S. shale drilling; lower the cost of products ranging from soda bottles to paint; and give Honeywell a steady profit stream from licensing the technique in the $150 billion plastics raw-material industry.

The process would allow companies to make ethylene -- the substance from which plastic and other materials are created -- from methane, commonly known as natural gas. Ethylene is now produced from ethane, which is found alongside natural gas and costs three times as much. Ethylene can also come from naphthas in oil refining, which are more expensive than ethane.

Commercially viable gas-to-ethylene conversion is the industry’s “holy grail,” making methane more versatile at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap because of shale drilling, said Gotz Veser, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Burned mostly as a fuel, natural gas closed yesterday at $1.98 per million British thermal units, compared with $13.58 at a July 2008 pre-recession peak.

“The industry has been looking for efficient ways to turn methane into higher hydrocarbons directly for decades,” said Veser, who has written more than three dozen papers on the subject. “Nobody has been able to come up with an economical process.”

Seeking Partners
Honeywell’s approach, proved in the laboratory by the company’s UOP petrochemical unit, won’t be marketable for several years. Morris Township, New Jersey-based Honeywell is designing and seeking partners for a pilot plant.

“This will basically for the first time take natural gas and directly convert it to a chemical, not through a multistage process,” UOP Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Gautam said. “At this point we have enough proof of principle, enough testing done that you can probably detect the excitement in my voice.”

Direct conversion has so far met with limited success because methane molecules are extremely stable. Once a reaction starts, it’s difficult to stop at the desired chemical, such as ethylene, before the methane breaks down further into low-value carbon and hydrogen gas, Veser said. Methane can now be converted to synthesis gas and then to methanol, which can be turned into ethylene. Those steps require more investment.

“We have completed proof-of-concept experimental work and have seen good yields and performance,” Gautam said. “The next step is to start working on development and scale-up of the technology.”

Reducing Production Costs
He said UOP’s process using natural gas would save about 40 percent from the cost of ethane-based ethylene production at current prices. Ethane for May delivery traded yesterday at the equivalent of $7.16 per million Btu, according to Jason Miner, a senior chemicals analyst with Bloomberg Industries.

Sales at UOP, part of the specialty materials division, rose 24 percent to $1.93 billion in 2011, or 5.3 percent of Honeywell’s $36.5 billion total. The parent company’s shares climbed 10 percent this year through yesterday, topping the 8.8 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Industrials Index.

Plastics were first primarily made from the byproducts of oil refining and later in the U.S. from lighter feedstocks such as ethane. Producers recently have been switching more to use ethane as an ethylene feedstock as prices drop relative to crude with the boom of U.S. natural gas production.

Dow’s Investment
Dow Chemical Co. said April 19 it will build a $1.7 billion plant in Freeport, Texas, to produce ethylene from ethane and other natural-gas liquids, with operations starting in 2017. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., Sasol Ltd. and Formosa Plastics Corp. are drawing up plans to build new U.S. ethylene plants during the next four years.

Dow and “a lot of the industry” have worked on a direct route for converting methane, said Carol A. Williams, executive vice president of manufacturing and engineering at the largest U.S. chemical maker.

“If they are announcing that, then I think that is a significant step forward for our industry,” said Williams, who hasn’t seen Honeywell’s technology. “Lots of people have worked on it and they have worked on it many different ways.”

Even if proved economically and scientifically viable, Honeywell’s process may take years to be adopted by an industry that changes slowly because of large investment in petrochemical complexes, said Nils-bertil Wallin, a Credit Agricole Securities analyst in New York. Some technologies need improvement after their discovery before gaining acceptance, he said.

Disruptive Technology
Hydraulic fracturing, or high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals into share rock formation to extract gas, has been around for decades, Wallin said. Only recently has fracking, as the process is known, set off a boom of natural gas production as methods became more efficient.

Honeywell’s direct methane conversion “could potentially be a disruptive technology,” Wallin said. “It would change the whole supply-demand dynamic.”

The benefits would include saving costs across the industry and giving gas producers another market for methane, he said.

UOP, which was a joint venture with Dow’s Union Carbide unit before Honeywell bought the half it didn’t own for about $825 million in 2005, was formed in 1914 based on an oil refining technology invented by Jesse Dubbs, whose enthusiasm for the industry led him to name his son Carbon Petroleum. The company since has created advances in unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters. More recently, it devised a process to make plastics raw materials from coal and sold its first license to a company in China, where coal is plentiful.

Synfuels Process
Low natural-gas prices drove Dallas-based Synfuels International Inc. to work since 1998 on a cost-effective process to transform the fuel into ethylene and gasoline blends. The company is ready to go to market after operating a demonstration facility, and an undisclosed global company is seeking to build a plant based on the technology, Chief Engineer Ed Peterson said.

In Synfuels’s process, methane is transformed to acetylene and then to ethylene. The technology matches the cost of ethane- to-ethylene conversion, he said.

“We’re always going to have lots of natural gas; now we have to find an economical way to make the products that we want out of it,” said Peterson, a chemical engineer who has worked at Dow and a Royal Dutch Shell unit. “We have one of those economical methods.”

Honeywell’s Gautam said methane-to-ethylene technology will prove cost effective even if natural gas prices rise much higher than today’s lows.

“We have found a route that just seems to work well,” Gautam said. “It will truly be a game-changing technology.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...seen-transforming-plastics-industry-tech.html

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ue-to-give-up-passports-in-swiss-capital.html



Wealthy Americans Queue to Give Up Passports in Swiss Capital
By Giles Broom
May 1, 2012

Rich Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship rose sevenfold since UBS AG whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld triggered a crackdown on tax evasion four years ago.

About 1,780 expatriates gave up their nationality at U.S. embassies last year, up from 235 in 2008, according to Andy Sundberg, secretary of Geneva’s Overseas American Academy, citing figures from the government’s Federal Register. The embassy in Bern, the Swiss capital, redeployed staff to clear a backlog as Americans queued to relinquish their passports.

The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside, is searching for tax cheats in offshore centers, including Switzerland, as the government tries to curb the budget deficit. Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport.

“It started with the fallout from UBS and non-U.S. banks feeling it’s too risky to deal with Americans abroad,” said Matthew Ledvina, a U.S. tax lawyer at Anaford AG in Zurich. “It will increase because Fatca will require banks to track down people, some of whom will make voluntary disclosures before renouncing their citizenship.”

Renunciations are higher in Switzerland because American expatriates expect extra scrutiny of their affairs after the UBS case and as the U.S. probes 11 other Swiss financial firms for aiding offshore tax evasion, said Martin Naville, head of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich.

Absurd Tax Laws
“Most of the real cross-border tax troubles have been around Switzerland,” Naville said. “We’ve got absurd tax laws coming into force because of the activities of certain people who tried to hide money.”

During a 10-minute renunciation ceremony in a booth with bullet-proof glass windows, embassy staff ask exiting Americans whether they are acting voluntarily and understand the implications of giving up their passports. They pay a fee of $450 to renounce and may incur an “exit tax” on unrealized capital gains if their assets exceed $2 million or their average annual U.S. tax bill is more than $151,000 during the past five years.

They receive a certificate within three months, telling them they are no longer American citizens and entitled to the services and protection of the U.S. government.

Taxman Cometh
The U.S. embassy in Bern declined to comment on renunciations. The U.S. State Department doesn’t disclose annual figures, said Elizabeth Finan a spokeswoman for the Washington- based department, adding that “on average” 1,100 people give up their citizenship each year.

While the U.S. taxes citizens regardless of where they reside, overseas income of as much as $95,100 is exempt and credits help compensate for foreign taxes paid. Americans living in Switzerland can’t take advantage of the absence of a capital gains tax in the Alpine country or tax deductions allowed on pension contributions.

“Every dollar you save, you lose to the U.S. tax man,” said tax lawyer Ledvina. “That’s one reason why people give up citizenship.”

Americans, who disclose their non-U.S. bank accounts to the IRS, must file the more expansive 8938 form beginning this year that asks for all foreign financial assets, including insurance contracts, loans and shareholdings in non-U.S. companies.

Imperial Overreach
The 2010 Fatca law requires banks to withhold 30 percent from “certain U.S.-connected payments” to some accounts of American clients who don’t disclose enough information to the IRS.

“There is incredible frustration at the audacity and imperial overreach of this law,” said David Kuenzi, a tax adviser at Thun Financial Advisors in Madison, Wisconsin, referring to Fatca.

Failure to file the 8938 form can result in a fine of as much as $50,000. Clients can also be penalized half the amount in an undeclared foreign bank account under the Banks Secrecy Act of 1970.

“It’s a big brother concept,” said Brent Lipschultz, a partner at New York-based accounting firm EisnerAmper.

The implementation of Fatca from next year comes after UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, paid a $780 million penalty in 2009 and handed over data on about 4,700 accounts to settle a tax- evasion dispute with the U.S. Whistle-blower Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in a U.S. prison in 2009 after informing the government and Senate about his American clients at the Geneva branch of Zurich-based UBS.

Voluntary Disclosures
The UBS settlement led to about 33,000 voluntary disclosures to the IRS in the three years through 2011 and the repatriation of billions of dollars to the U.S. Swiss banks saw their offshore North American assets shrink by about 60 percent to 60 billion Swiss francs ($66 billion) in 2010 from three years earlier, according to Boston Consulting Group.

American Citizens Abroad, a Geneva-based organization that campaigns for taxation based on residency, said the government doesn’t always distinguish between U.S.-based tax dodgers with offshore accounts and expatriates that need foreign banking services.

“The perception is that any American living overseas is there for a nefarious reason,” said Marylouise Serrato, executive director of the organization that has members in 90 countries. “There isn’t a deep understanding in the U.S. of why American citizens would move overseas.”

Civil War Hangover
Taxing Americans resident overseas is a “hangover from the Civil War” and the introduction of federal income tax in 1861, according to Jackie Bugnion of American Citizens Abroad. The rules make it harder for Americans to hold foreign bank accounts and gain access to mortgages, she said.

German lenders Deutsche Bank AG and HVB Group terminated the securities accounts of some U.S. citizens following the announcement of stricter reporting requirements. Swiss Raiffeisen Group, Switzerland’s third-biggest banking network, decided at the end of last year to sever ties with U.S.- domiciled clients and refuse new applications from any American, said Philippe Thevoz, a spokesman for the St.Gallen, Switzerland-based firm.

The additional compliance costs for companies to ensure that Americans they hire are filing the correct U.S. tax returns and asset-declaration forms are at least $5,000 per person, said Ledvina. Where individuals are getting their returns prepared, the expense may amount to $1,500 to $2,000, which is pushing expatriates to consider giving up citizenship.

“The compliance costs are high and they’re getting worse,” Ledvina said. “It’s hard to serve two authorities and the problem for Americans abroad is that the IRS doesn’t care.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ue-to-give-up-passports-in-swiss-capital.html

 

[trysail]

From the 2009 Form 990 Schedule J of National Public Radio ( Reportable Compensation ):

Robert Siegel: $362,687
Steven Inskeep: 361,093
Rene Montagne: 357,037
Scott Simon: 355,400
Michele Norris: 298,360

( Does not include income from speaker fees, book fees, television appearance fees. )

 

[VaticanAssassin]

The oldest trees on the planet

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree-gallery/all/1

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree_3a.jpg

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree_5a.jpg

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree_7a.jpg

 

[trysail]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree-gallery/all/1
The oldest trees on the planet...

Lovely.

There's something that's somehow both graceful and soothing about cedars. In many places, they add a truly distinctive touch to the country landscape— especially in autumn and winter when they stand out because they provide welcome spots of green in an otherwise dark and grey panorama.


Ahhh, yes, there's an image of the now-infamous bristlecone pine tree ( recently made notorious— thank you, Michael Mann).

 

[VaticanAssassin]

Pando (Latin for "I spread"), also known as The Trembling Giant is a clonal colony of a single male Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) determined to be a single living organism by identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system. The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kg (6,600 short tons),making it the heaviest known organism.The root system of Pando, at an estimated 80,000 years old, is among the oldest known living organisms.

80,000 years old!!!!!

http://pandodaily.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pando1.jpg

 

[trysail]

Why is it that we just can't seem to export any trial lawyers?

Anybody out there interested in some ambulance chasers?

by Lam Vo

...Our trade deficit last year was $558 billion

But we export a lot. Last year, U.S. exports were worth $2.1 trillion. Which raises a simple question: $2.1 trillion worth of what?

Mostly goods. Also, services:

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/03/pm-usa-exports/gr-pm-exportgoodsnservices-462.jpg

Here's a closer look at our goods exports in 2011. The two biggest categories — industrial supplies and capital goods — account for about $500 billion apiece.

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/03/pm-usa-exports/gr-pm-exportgoods-462.jpg

Here's a breakdown of our services exports:

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/03/pm-usa-exports/gr-pm-exportservices-462.jpg

So who's buying all these goods and services? Here's the top five:

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/03/pm-usa-exports/map-pm-exportscountry-462.jpg

...And here's the top goods we're selling to each of the top five:

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/03/pm-usa-exports/gr-pm-exportscountry-462.jpg



http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/14/148460268/what-america-sells-to-the-world

 

[trysail]

There are some people 'round this joint who desperately need to spend time here:
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/quiz/index.htm

Maybe, just maybe, they might learn something.






BostonFed
FedQuiz
BostonQuiz

 

[trysail]

If you want to be an executive of any publicly-owned investment manager, you have to have the ability to smile-and-lie. The conflicts of interest (note the use of the plural) are inherent, embedded and unavoidable.


It is impossible to smile-and-lie without possessing the ability to believe whatever it is that you choose to believe.



_________________

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...vate-funds-trail-markets-riskless-return.html



Man Worst as Private Funds Trail Markets
By Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam
May 16, 2012

Man Group Plc (EMG) is leading declines among global investment firms as private-equity and hedge funds, the best-paid money managers, produce the worst returns for public shareholders.

Shares of London-based Man Group, the biggest publicly traded hedge fund, have declined 63 percent in the past year, including reinvested dividends, the most of 32 money managers in the BLOOMBERG RISKLESS RETURN RANKING, and they had the highest volatility. Buyout and hedge-fund firms including Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (OZM) and Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG) ranked near the bottom, while mutual-fund firms led by Aberdeen Asset Management Plc (ADN) dominated the top.

Managers of private funds, marketed to the richest investors, have proven to be poor picks for public shareholders because of their reliance on performance-based fees, which have been eroded by volatile capital markets since the 2008 financial crisis. All six alternative-asset firms that have held initial share sales in the U.S. since 2007 are trading below their offer price. Carlyle Group LP (CG), which sought to buck that trend with a discounted stock sale, failed when the shares sank below the offering price on May 9...

Conflict of Interest
Investors buying the stock of a money manager share in the fees the manager receives for running funds. They don’t participate directly in the returns of the funds, instead competing with investors in the pools, whose aim is to minimize fees. That potential conflict of interest has been an issue for public asset managers since Dreyfus Corp. was sued by fund investors over its 1965 initial public offering.

Earnings of buyout and hedge funds, so-called alternative asset managers, can be difficult to predict because they get the vast majority of their fees from carried interest, or a cut of profits from fund investments...

...The appeal of alternative managers may also be limited because many list on the public markets as limited partnerships rather than corporations, which gives them more leeway in restricting shareholder claims.

Carried Interest
Most private-equity and hedge funds typically take 20 percent of investment gains as carried interest, on top of 2 percent of assets as a management fee to cover expenses. Traditional asset-management firms, which offer products such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, get most of their income from management fees, which are more stable...

‘Client Needs’

Och-Ziff, based in New York, had the 13th-highest volatility and the second-worst total return after slumping 46 percent in the past year, including reinvested dividends. Fortress, also based in New York, fell 34 percent in the past year and its volatility was second only to Man Group at 56.8.

In the Bloomberg ranking, eight of the 10 worst firms by total return were alternative-asset managers. One the other side of the spectrum, nine of the 10 top performers by risk-adjusted and by total return were traditional asset managers. Shares of alternative managers declined, on average, by 33 percent in the past year, compared with 15 percent for stock-and-bond managers.

Aberdeen Top
Private-equity firms pool money from investors such as pension plans and endowments, with a mandate to buy companies, overhaul and then sell them, and return funds with a profit after about 10 years. The firms use debt to finance the transactions and amplify returns. Hedge funds raise money from many of the same investors and have a similar fee structure. They usually don’t lock up capital for long periods, buy more liquid assets, and can bet on rising and falling securities.

Aberdeen, the top performer with a 9.7 percent total return, had the third-lowest price swings. The combination produced a risk-adjusted return of 0.3 percent, the best among the 32 companies. The company has attracted investors into higher-fee products including global and emerging market stocks.

Affiliated Managers Group Inc. (AMG), a firm that acquires stakes in a diverse mix of asset managers, produced the second-best total return for the No. 2 spot in the risk-adjusted return ranking after shares were about unchanged in the past year.

Ashmore Group Plc (ASHM), a U.K. fund manager that invests in emerging markets, produced the second-best total return and the sixth-lowest volatility, for the No. 3 spot in the risk-adjusted return ranking. The firm benefited from client deposits into its funds.

Janus’s Redemptions
The risk-adjusted return is calculated by dividing total return by volatility, or the degree of daily price variation, giving a measure of income per unit of risk. A higher volatility means the price of an asset can swing dramatically in a short period of time, increasing the potential for unexpected losses.

One traditional asset manager ranking at the bottom is Janus Capital Group Inc. (JNS), the Denver-based mutual-fund company. Janus is an exception, in part because like managers of hedge funds and private-equity funds, the firm charges performance- based fees that rise or fall based on returns. The firm has also been hurt by declining assets and 11 straight quarters of redemptions as performance at its stock funds faltered. Janus had the third-highest volatility over the past year and the sixth-worst return.

Beating the Market
Asset management firms have tapped the public markets for capital for almost half-a-century, and for much of the past decades have outperformed the stock market. Franklin Resources Inc. (BEN), the manager of the Franklin and Templeton mutual funds, has delivered about 23 percent in average annual gains to investors, excluding dividends, since it went public in 1971, according to the firm. T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (TROW) shares have risen at an average annual rate of about 19 percent since the firm’s IPO in 1986.

Dreyfus, which is now owned by Bank of New York Mellon Corp., was one of the first U.S. money managers to go public in 1965. After the IPO, a group of fund investors sued Dreyfus executives and the company over their profits from the sale. The selling shareholders eventually agreed to settle the lawsuit without any admission of wrongdoing.

Man’s Peak
Most alternative managers in the U.S. didn’t go public until 2007, meaning they don’t have a long track record as a shareholders’ company, and their performance could turn around if stock markets strengthen. Man Group and buyout firm 3i Group went public almost two decades ago and were able to benefit from rising markets in the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s.

Man Group, which went public in 1994, handed shareholders an average annual gain of 27 percent from the time of its IPO until mid-2007, when the stock peaked, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Since then, the shares have slumped at an average rate of 35 percent. 3i shares have declined an average annual 1.2 percent since the firm’s IPO, also in 1994.

Fortress was the first of the U.S. private equity and hedge fund managers to go public in 2007, and was followed that same year by Blackstone and Och-Ziff. Fortress has declined 82 percent since its February 2007 IPO, and Och-Ziff has lost 76 percent.

‘Valuations Were Great’
Blackstone (BX), the largest private-equity manager, went public at the peak of the leveraged-buyout market to raise $4.75 billion. Blackstone’s IPO, which generated a combined $2.6 billion for executives Steven Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, has provided public shareholders with a 61 percent decline since the IPO.

“The valuations were great in 2007 and the markets were very receptive to the investment story,” Benjamin Phillips, a partner at consulting firm Casey, Quirk & Associates LLC in Darien, Connecticut, said in a telephone interview. “Liquidity for the executives was also a key issue,” Phillips said.

KKR & Co. (KKR), which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, didn’t hold an IPO, choosing instead to combine with its publicly traded European fund. The firm moved its listing to the U.S. from Amsterdam in 2010 and the shares have gained 18 percent since then.

Carlyle (CG) had sought to avoid the fate of Blackstone and others with an offering price that was below the proposed range of $23 to $25 a share. The stock has fallen 4 percent since its May 3 IPO.

Big Investors
“We firmly believe Carlyle’s status as a public company will strengthen our capabilities,” co-CEO David Rubenstein said on a call with investors yesterday. “No doubt as a public company there will be times when we face challenges, just as there will be times when we see considerable opportunities.”

Pension fund, endowments and other big investors in private equity and hedge funds typically push for lower management fees, and prefer that the firms focus on generating performance fees. Carlyle earlier this year lowered fees for investors ready to put in $500 million or more for its latest buyout fund, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

There may not be a compelling reason to own shares of these companies largely because of the “vagaries” of the market and the fluctuations in quarterly earnings, according to consultant Bobroff.

“On the private equity side, it might not turn out too well for investors,” Bobroff said. “Clearly, Blackstone, and more recently, Carlyle haven’t been rewarding for investors who bought in at the IPO.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...vate-funds-trail-markets-riskless-return.html

 

[trysail]

Put Those Shoes On: Running Won't Kill Your Knees
by Patti Neighmond

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/28/134861448/put-those-shoes-on-running-wont-kill-your-knees
March 28, 2011

Yes, it's true: Jogging, long thought to hurt knees with all that pounding and rattling around, may actually be beneficial for the complex and critical joint. There are caveats, though, especially for people who have suffered significant knee injury or are overweight. But for the most part, researchers say, jogging for your health seems like a good idea.

David Felson, a researcher and epidemiologist at Boston University School of Medicine, says past concern about jogging and knees centered on the continuous impact of the foot to the ground and suggestion that it caused degeneration of the knee and the onset of osteoarthritis. But when researchers actually studied the impact of running on knees, he says, that's not what they found ( http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2011/03/28/effect-of-physical-activity-on-knees.pdf ).

"We know from many long-term studies that running doesn't appear to cause much damage to the knees," he says. "When we look at people with knee arthritis, we don't find much of a previous history of running, and when we look at runners and follow them over time, we don't find that their risk of developing osteoarthritis is any more than expected." Both types of studies agree, says Felson, that recreational running doesn't increase the risk of arthritis.

'Running Is Healthy For The Joint'

In one study, Swedish researchers found that exercise, including jogging, may even be beneficial. Felson describes how researchers took one group of people at risk of osteoarthritis and had them engage in exercise, including jogging. The other group didn't exercise. After imaging the joints of the participants in both study groups, they found that the biochemistry of cartilage actually appeared to improve in those participants who were running. Felson says that suggests that "running is actually healthy for the joint."

Jonathan Chang, an orthopedic surgeon in Alhambra, Calif., says that exercise appears to stimulate cartilage to repair minor damage. It could be that the impact of body weight when the foot hits the ground increases production of certain proteins in the cartilage that make it stronger, he says. This is similar to the way exercise, in particular weight-bearing exercise like jogging, increases bone and muscle mass.

According to Nancy Lane, director of the UC Davis Center for Healthy Aging who specializes in rheumatology and diseases related to aging, scientists are now starting to understand that there is some loss of cartilage annually after a certain age. Some doctors think cartilage loss begins after age 40.

But, according to Lane, "if you have a relatively normal knee and you're jogging five to six times a week at a moderate pace, then there's every reason to believe that your joints will remain healthy."

An Indicator Of Activity

That's great news for Paul and Lyra Rider, avid joggers who live in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. Jogging on Mulholland Drive, they say, offers fantastic views — along with a relatively flat route. Paul, 46, jogs a seven- to eight-minute mile — not as fast as his younger days. Lyra jogs a bit slower. She enjoys the exercise, health benefits and simplicity of jogging. "You don't need lots of fancy equipment, and you just feel great when you're done," she says.

Lane did some of the very first studies of runners and knees while she was a resident at Stanford University.

"We wanted to answer the important question of whether, if you continued to run into your 50s and 60s and even 70s, you also ran the risk of damaging the knees," she says. The answer, she says: absolutely not. And there was an extra bonus: While enthusiasm for jogging seemed to diminish as people hit their mid-60s, Lane says they were still more inclined than the non-joggers to get out and exercise.

"They were active doing other activities, like walking, yoga, water aerobics," she says. "We found that as these people aged, not only did they feel better about themselves, but their quality of life was better and they tended to actually live longer" than the non-joggers.

So, the message for joggers like the Riders, who hope to be jogging all their lives, is a hearty two thumbs up.

A Few Caveats

Lane cautions that if you have suffered a knee injury, especially one that required surgery, running can actually increase your risk of knee arthritis. So can routinely running really fast — at a five- or six-minute-mile pace — or running in a marathon. Lane's best advice? Running in moderation, at an eight- to 10-minute mile pace, for about 40 minutes a day.

But if people are more than 20 pounds overweight, Lane says they shouldn't start off with an intense running regimen.

"I have them walk and walk until they're to a point where I think their body mass is reduced enough that it won't traumatize their joints," she says. Otherwise, significantly overweight joggers run the risk of that extra weight stressing the knee to the point of inflammation, the formation of bony spurs and accelerated cartilage loss.

 

[trysail]

The strong demand for charlatans
by Chris Dillow
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad...2012/05/the-strong-demand-for-charlatans.html
May 27, 2012

In the improbable event of ever being invited to give a commencement address, my advice to graduates wanting a lucrative career would be: become a charlatan. There has always been a strong demand for witchdoctors, seers, quacks, pundits, mediums, tipsters and forecasters. A nice new paper by Nattavudh Powdthavee and Yohanes Riyanto shows how quickly such demand arises.

They got students in Thailand and Singapore to bet upon a series of five tosses of a fair coin. They were given five numbered envelopes, each of which contained a prediction for the numbered toss. Before the relevant toss, they could pay to see the prediction. After the toss, they could freely see the prediction.

The predictions were organized in such a way that after the first toss half the subjects saw an incorrect prediction and half a correct one, after the second toss a quarter saw two correct predictions, and so on. The set-up is similar to Derren Brown's The System, which gave people randomly-generated tips on horses, with a few people receiving a series of correct tips.

And here's the thing. Subjects who saw just two correct predictions were 15 percentage points more likely to buy a prediction for the third toss than subjects who got a right and wrong prediction in the earlier rounds. Subjects who saw four successive correct tips were 28 percentage points more likely to buy the prediction for the fifth round.

This tells us that even intelligent and numerate people are quick to misperceive randomness and to pay for an expertise that doesn't exist; the subjects included students of sciences, engineering and accounting. The authors say:

Observations of a short streak of successful predictions of a truly random event are sufficient to generate a significant belief in the hot hand.​

It's easy to believe that this happens in real life. For example, the people who are thought to have predicted the financial crisis of 2008 are invested with an expertise which they might not really have.

Of course, there are other reasons why people might want to pay for forecasts; maybe they want a false sense of security of a predictable world, or they want someone to blame if things go wrong. This paper, however, suggests that these are not the only motives. Instead, people are too quick to perceive skill and thus to pay for something that doesn't exist. The demand for forecasters and tipsters substantially exceeds the real ability such pundits actually have.

About the author
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/11/the_normblog_pr_1.html

 

[trysail]

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/06/04/europeanspreads_enl.jpg?t=1338826145


Once everybody realized that some eurozone countries might not be able to pay
back their debts, they started demanding higher interest rates to lend to weaker countries.


​

 

[richard_daily]

It's so lonely in here... and it smells like old people.

 

[trysail]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/chavez-losing-out-to-benjamin-as-venezuela-seek-dollar.html



Chavez Losing Out to ‘Benjamin’ as Venezuela Seek Dollar
By Daniel Cancel
June 7, 2012

Venezuela’s bolivar is tumbling to a record low in the unregulated street markets of Caracas as individuals and companies seek to buy a shrinking number of dollars, adding to the region’s highest inflation rate.

The local currency has weakened 6.6 percent this year to 9.25 per dollar, according to the blog Lechuga Verde, or Green Lettuce, which cites traders. Individuals seeking to buy U.S. currency consult websites and Twitter accounts that call money Fresh Avocado or Your Benjamin, a reference to Benjamin Franklin, whose face appears on the $100 bill, because the government prohibits local newspapers and broadcasters from mentioning the black-market exchange rate.

The bolivar, pegged at 4.3 per dollar for “priority” imports, is sinking the most this year since President Hugo Chavez shut a government-endorsed unregulated market in May 2010, citing the potential for money laundering. With inflation topping 20 percent a year and oil, the source for 95 percent of export revenue, falling, the government has reduced sales of dollar bonds used to access foreign currency. The move is spurring speculation that the next government will devalue the bolivar, regardless of who wins October presidential elections.

“The government is dead-set against giving dollars for capital flight,” Boris Segura, a strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc., said by phone from New York. “If they don’t get their act together in terms of irrigating more dollars in the currency market, this is bound to weaken more.”

‘Priority’ Imports
As part of controls to keep dollars in the country, Chavez, who is battling cancer as he seeks re-election in October, pegs the bolivar at 4.3 per dollar for “priority” imports such as food staples, medicine and machinery. The government sets a rate of 5.3 per dollar for goods it deems non-essential. Authorized buyers at the 5.3 rate obtain the U.S. currency through a central bank-run market that provides dollars through the trading of bonds.

Venezuelans who can’t get government approval to purchase dollars at those rates turn to the black market. Higher-end retail items that aren’t regulated such as whisky, clothing and cars are priced at that rate, helping fuel inflation.

The outlook for government revenue is worsening as oil prices drop. Crude has fallen about 22 percent in New York since reaching a peak this year of $109.77 on Feb. 24.

The bolivar has weakened in the unregulated market more than any official exchange rate in Latin America this year, except Brazil’s real, which is down 8 percent against the dollar. Argentina’s peso has dropped 23 percent in the country’s so-called blue-chip market used to skirt currency controls.

No Bonds
Venezuela has sold no dollar bonds this year after issuing a record $7.2 billion of the securities last year to meet foreign- currency demand and finance government spending.

A Finance Ministry official declined to comment. The central bank’s press department didn’t return an e-mail seeking comment.

Individual investors seeking to purchase the dollar securities are increasingly being squeezed out of the primary market. During the October sale of $3 billion of bonds, individuals and companies who put in the minimum order of $3,000 were only allocated $1,500 each.

Local investors were also left out of a dollar bond sale by Petroleos de Venezuela SA last month, when the state oil company decided to raise money in a private placement with the central bank and public banks.

Cancer Recurrence
When permitted, locals buy dollar bonds from the government and PDVSA, as the oil company is known, at face value in bolivars at the official rate of 4.3 per dollar and sell them to investors abroad in dollars at a discount. The bonds due in 2026 that were sold in October began trading at 75 cents on the dollar when they debuted in secondary markets.

Chavez, whose presidency began in 1999, has cut back on his public appearances since a cancer recurrence in February. His illness has caused delays in economic planning, an example of government “disorganization,” according to Francisco Rodriguez, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.

Venezuelan dollar bonds yield an average 12.86 percent, the third-highest among emerging markets tracked by JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBI Global index, behind Belize and Argentina. Investors demand an extra 1,100 basis points, or 11 percentage points, in yield above U.S. Treasuries partly because the government is dependent on oil for access to dollars and after foreign- currency reserves fell 39 percent since the beginning of 2009 to $25.77 billion.

‘Large Devaluation’
Investor expectations of a devaluation following the October elections are also increasing dollar demand and weakening the bolivar in the unregulated market, Juan Pablo Fuentes, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in a report.

“Tight capital controls, falling international reserves, and expectations of a large devaluation soon after October’s presidential elections have pushed the currency measurably lower in recent weeks,” Fuentes wrote. “After October, expect the government to implement a large devaluation, as hard currency becomes more scarce.”

Inflation running over 20 percent a year is eroding the value of the government’s dollar revenue, leading to growing budget deficits and creating pressure on Chavez to devalue, said Asdrubal Oliveros, an economist at Caracas-based research and consulting firm Ecoanalitica.

“Devaluations in Venezuela are primarily driven by fiscal needs,” Oliveros said.

Legal Concerns
Chavez, who installed currency controls in 2003 and maintained a peg of 2.15 bolivars per dollar from 2005 until 2010, has devalued the currency twice in two years. The government may devalue about 28 percent to 6 per dollar later this year, according to Fuentes.

Corporations, which were using the market to repatriate dividends, no longer participate in the black market out of concern over the legal ramifications, according to Ecoanalitica.

Since the closing of the so-called parallel market in May 2010, unregulated trading has dropped about 80 percent to between $18 million and $25 million a day, Ecoanalitica economists Oliveros and Jose Luis Saboin wrote in a February report. The bolivar traded at about 8.3 per dollar when Chavez shut down the parallel market in 2010.

Central bank President Nelson Merentes, who set up the government-run currency market known as Sitme in June 2010, told Chavez the black market rate is “under control” when asked about the rate on Aug. 17 last year during a national broadcast. In the Sitme market, buyers get the 5.3-per-dollar rate.

Venezuelans buy dollars on the black market either by exchanging cash or sending a transfer to banks outside the country. While this is illegal and can lead to imprisonment, people find ways to sidestep the controls, Segura said.

Individuals can also exchange bolivars for Colombian pesos in the border city of Cucuta and then convert pesos into dollars. That implicit rate is closer to 9.66, according to Lechuga Verde.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Segura said.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/chavez-losing-out-to-benjamin-as-venezuela-seek-dollar.html

 

[trysail]

When they turn people who are supposed to be bankers into salespeople, this is what all-too-frequently gets thrown out the door:

...it... didn’t meet at least portions of the bank’s so-called five P’s of lending: people, payment, protection, purpose and perspective, the people said. Those five P’s, which other banks often call the five C’s -- character, capacity, collateral, capital, conditions -- are used to examine whether a borrower is creditworthy...

Some people call it "credit analysis." To others, it's simply rudimentary prudence.







http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-25/jpmorgan-shuns-chesapeake-business-that-goldman-courts.html

 

[trysail]

The spurious claim that the derecho had anything to do with the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming conjecture is an outrageous breach of journalistic ethics.


To make the claim in the face of the SPECIFIC CAVEAT by scientists that this WEATHER EVENT had absolutely NO CONNECTION to climate change can't help but make an objective listener question the intentions and reliability of the report's originator.


There are words for this kind of practice: indoctrination and propaganda.