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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/kDGqFicptkQ/German Chancellor Angela Merkel is furious about the U.S. eavesdropping on her calls. She is the latest to protest loudly to the U.S. as the EU gathers for a regular summit. The meeting should have focused on immigration and the economy, but will be sidetracked by the continued NSA spying anger.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. We begin this hour with the latest news about the extent of the National Security Agency's spying activities. The Guardian newspaper came out with a report this afternoon saying that the U.S. has monitored the phone traffic of 35 world leaders. The paper cites a document from 2006. The news comes after revelations yesterday that the NSA tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone.
The news further damages U.S. relations with Western Europe. German officials reacted to the news with deep concern.
THOMAS DE MAIZIERE: (Speaking foreign language)
BLOCK: That's the German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere speaking with German public broadcaster ARD. He called the allegations really bad. He also said that as long as America is Germany's best friend, it really can't work like this. Meanwhile, at the European Union summit in Brussels, many leaders are expressing indignation that the U.S., their strongest ally, is engaging in any spying on European officials and citizens.
For more, we're joined by NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. She is in Berlin. And Soraya, this is the latest in a series of revelations about the NSA's activities, including earlier revelations this summer about spying on Germany, but reaction now seems to be much stronger.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: Yeah, I mean, they've been pretty upset by this all along. I mean, you're looking at German history here where during the East German Communist times the Stasi did a lot of spying on people and certainly during the Cold War there was a lot of it and then go back to World War II.
But I think what's particularly outrageous to them now is the fact that this was done on the chancellor herself. This is arguably the strongest or most important leader in Europe and certainly in Germany and so there really is a feeling of betrayal.
BLOCK: This all led to Chancellor Merkel calling President Obama. He apparently assured her that her phone is not being listened to. So I'm a little confused. If the NSA was tapping Merkel's phone, what does that mean? They were tapping it, but just not listening to what she was saying?
NELSON: Well, I think what President Obama was trying to tell her was that it's not being listened to now and it's won't be listened to in the future, but he didn't address, in fact, what happened in the past. And this is the $64,000 question, if you will, and what people in Germany want to know is, you know, did this, in fact, happen and what happened before.
And it sort of leads to the whole issue of why Germans aren't placated by these assurances by the president. They don't feel he's taking these allegations seriously and they don't really like the, trust me, it's OK, don't worry about it approach that they're seeing.
BLOCK: And apart from Germany, Soraya, what other reaction has there been across Europe?
NELSON: Well, there's a lot of outrage being expressed by leaders. The French president, for example, who had also called the U.S. ambassador in Paris on the carpet to answer questions about spying allegations there, wants to see this on the EU summit agenda, that this whole matter be discussed.
And also, Annette Heuser who is the executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation in Washington says some European leaders are calling for pulling the Transatlantic trade talks on hold.
ANNETTE HEUSER: Bottom line is, Europeans are not accepting this when it comes to the transatlantic relationship because you don't spy on your friends and I would say this NSA scandal is a political phenomena right now that is happening across the Atlantic.
NELSON: She adds that the proposed trade agreement is the only prestigious project that Europeans and Americans have in the pipeline so this is a real serious issue.
BLOCK: And Soraya, it got even more serious today with that report I mentioned from The Guardian newspaper which says the NSA was able to monitor the phones of 35 world leaders. What more can you tell us about that?
NELSON: The newspaper cites a memo from October 2006 that it said it got from Edward Snowden. Now, this NSA memo doesn't name the world's leaders who were spied and said that it didn't receive much in the way of useful intelligence. But what was interesting is that they were asking U.S. officials in other departments to handover - basically open up their Rolodexes and hand over foreign contacts, with the hopes that they would get more intelligence from those individuals.
BLOCK: From those phone numbers.
NELSON: From those phone numbers.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Berlin. Soraya, thanks.
NELSON: You're welcome, Melissa.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Ellis Island will reopen to the public Monday, almost exactly a year after Superstorm Sandy's swells reached 8 feet and badly damaged the former U.S. immigration entry point.
"We are delighted to be able to share Ellis Island's uniquely American story with the world once more," Superintendent David Luchsinger said in a statement Thursday.
The Oct. 29 storm swamped boilers and electrical systems, and the 27.5-acre island in New York Harbor was without power for months.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum, housed in the main building on the island, showcases the stories of the millions of immigrants who passed through the island to start their lives in the United States.
More than a million documents, photographs and other artifacts at the museum were moved before the storm because it was impossible to maintain the climate-controlled environment needed for their preservation.
While the halls and buildings will reopen, the artifacts remain in a temporary storage facility in Maryland, park officials said. There's no estimate on when they will return to the island, because considerable work to upgrade and fix the buildings is still ongoing.
"You're not going to see a complete restoration of Ellis Island for a while," spokesman John Warren said.
Crews are still working on revamping so that the next bad storm won't leave the island shuttered for a year, he said.
Nearby Liberty Island, which also flooded during Sandy, reopened on July 4th but was closed during the partial federal government shutdown.
"I can think of no better way to celebrate Lady Liberty's 127th birthday than to welcome visitors back to the place where those 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free' first came to our shores," Luchsinger said, referring to a line in the Emma Lazarus poem "The New Colossus," which is engraved on a plaque hung inside the statue's pedestal.
There's no cost estimate yet on how much it will take to repair and revamp the island.
FiLE - In this April 15, 2014 file photo, Dr. Vladimir Keilis-Borok, of the University of California, Los Angeles, listens to questions from reporters regarding his earthquake prediction, in Palm Springs, Calif. Keilis-Borok, a seismologist who sought to predict earthquakes died on Oct. 19, 2013 at his home in Culver City after a long illness, according to the University of California, Los Angeles. He was 92. (AP Photo/The Desert Sun, Wade Byars, File)
FiLE - In this April 15, 2014 file photo, Dr. Vladimir Keilis-Borok, of the University of California, Los Angeles, listens to questions from reporters regarding his earthquake prediction, in Palm Springs, Calif. Keilis-Borok, a seismologist who sought to predict earthquakes died on Oct. 19, 2013 at his home in Culver City after a long illness, according to the University of California, Los Angeles. He was 92. (AP Photo/The Desert Sun, Wade Byars, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a seismologist who believed earthquakes could be predicted months in advance, has died. He was 92.
Keilis-Borok died on Oct. 19 at his home in Culver City after a long illness, according to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he had taught since 1998.
The Russian scientist gained prominence after a strong earthquake in Japan and another in Central California occurred in 2003 within a time period that was forecast by his international team of seismic experts.
"Earthquake prediction is called the Holy Grail of earthquake science and has been considered impossible by many scientists. It's not impossible," Keilis-Borok said in a statement released by UCLA in January 2004.
He then made a bold claim: A quake of magnitude-6.4 or larger would rock a 12,000-sqaure-mile region east of Los Angeles before Sept. 5, 2004 — a large swath that includes the Mojave Desert, the Coachella Valley, the Imperial Valley and eastern San Diego County.
He gave it a 50-50 chance, basing his prediction on a pattern of earthquakes recorded in the region over the past decades including the magnitude-7.3 Landers earthquake in 1992 and the 7.1 Hector Mine quake in 1999.
But the quake never struck and critics said he had been lucky in his previous predictions. Despite the failed attempt, Keilis-Borok still had a few supporters.
Earthquake prediction today remains elusive. Most scientists are generally pessimistic about ever having that ability and have instead focused on emergency preparedness and advocating for an early warning system designed to give people a few seconds of notice after a quake occurs but before damaging waves spread widely.
Born in Moscow on July 31, 1921, Kellis-Borok earned his doctorate from the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He worked at UCLA from 1998 to 2010, when he retired. He was known as "Volodya" by close friends.
Kellis-Borok is survived by a daughter, Irina Kashin, a granddaughter and two great-grandchildren, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-10-24-US-Obit-Keilis-Borok/id-04133a389cf44b6793663b29f3560629Twitter plans to price its IPO shares between $17 and $20 when it lists on the New York Stock Exchange, the company said Thursday in a filing
Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $18.50—the midpoint of the range—Twitter estimates the net proceeds from the sale of shares of common stock will be roughly $1.25 billion, the company said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some 80.5 million shares of common stock will be registered, according to the filing.
Releasing its IPO price range positions Twitter to begin its “road show,” seeking to raise funds from investors across the country. In documents filed last week, the company said it would list its shares under the ticker symbol TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange, representing a big win for the market over rival Nasdaq.
Twitter has yet to determine a date for the listing, though one report suggested Nov. 15 could be the day.
Twitter’s IPO is likely to be one of the hottest of the year and the most prominent in social media since Facebook went public last year. Twitter’s share price range will be markedly lower than Facebook’s, which priced its IPO at $38 per share.
Twitter filed for its highly anticipated public offering earlier this month.
Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service
More by Zach Miners, IDG News Service
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Cathy Yarbrough
press@ashg.org
858-243-1814
American Society of Human Genetics
A newly discovered potential gene-diet interaction for colorectal cancer was reported today (Thursday, Oct. 24) at the American Society of Human Genetics 2013 meeting in Boston. The interaction may shed light on the statistically significant increased risk of colorectal cancer that is associated with consumption of red and processed meat, the researchers said.
"If replicated, our findings have a relevant public health significance because diet is a modifiable risk factor for colorectal cancer," said Jane Figueiredo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, who presented the study this morning at the ASHG meeting.
"It is conceivable that selected individuals at higher risk of colorectal cancer based on genomic profiling could be targeted for screening, diet modification and other prevention strategies," added Dr. Figueiredo, one of the scientists collaborating in the international NIH-funded Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium (GECCO).
The scientists also determined that the lower colorectal cancer risk associated with vegetable, fruit and fiber intake also was linked to genetic variants.
The possibility that genetic variants may modify an individual's risk for disease based on diet has not been thoroughly investigated but represents an important new insight into disease development, said Ulrike Peters, Ph.D., M.P.H, who headed the study and is a Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Public Health Sciences Division in Seattle.
The study is the first colorectal cancer investigation with the statistical power to identify gene-dietary interactions across the genome of a large population of individuals, said Li Hsu, Ph.D., Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the study's lead biostatistician.
The study population totaled 9,287 patients with colorectal cancer and a control group of 9,117 individuals without cancer, all participants in 10 GECCO observational studies.
Scientists systematically searched 2.7 million variants to identify those that are associated with the consumption of red meat and processed meat as well as fruits and vegetables. The genetic sequences and information about the participants' medical history and diet are in the GECCO database.
A significant interaction between the genetic variant rs4143094 and processed meat consumption was detected. This variant is located on the same chromosome 10 region that includes GATA3, a transcription factor gene previously linked to several forms of cancer. The transcription factor encoded by this gene normally plays a role in the immune system.
On chromosome 8, a statistically significant diet-gene interaction was found in another variant, rs1269486. This variant was associated with reduced risk of colorectal cancer.
How specific foods affect the activities of genes has not been established. Drs. Peters and Figueiredo speculate that digestion of processed meat may promote an immunological or inflammatory response that may trigger tumor development. The GATA3 transcription factor normally would help suppress the immunological or inflammatory response. However, if the GATA3 gene region contains a mutation, it may encode a dysregulated transcription factor that impacts its ability to suppress the response.
In addition to uncovering a novel gene-diet interaction for colorectal cancer, the GECCO study may have important implications for understanding the underlying causes and biological pathways of cancer, said Dr. Peters.
"Our study highlights two genetic regions that are biologically interesting in cancer," she said, referring to the variants located near GATA3 and at 8q23.3.
"These genetic loci may have interesting biological significance given their location in the genome, and further functional analyses are required," said Dr. Peters.
The GECCO multi-institutional research team continues to investigate gene-diet interactions through independent studies on a well-characterized large cohort of European colorectal cancer patients and a collaboration with the Colorectal Cancer Trans-disciplinary study (CORECT) consortium.
"GECCO aims to continue to discover additional colorectal cancer-related variants by investigating how genetic variants are modified by other environmental and lifestyle risk factors, including biomarkers as well as how they influence patient treatment response and survival," Dr. Peters said.
Colorectal cancer is a multi-factorial disease attributed to lifestyle, environmental and genetic causes. Over 30 genetic susceptibility alleles for colorectal cancer have been pinpointed throughout the genome. They include rare variants that have a strong impact on risk and common variants that are low risk.
###
The scientists' ASHG abstract is titled, "Genome-wide analyses highlight gene interaction with processed meat and vegetable intake for colorectal cancer risk." Link to abstract online: http://www.ashg.org/2013meeting/abstracts/fulltext/f130123041.htm
About ASHG
The American Society of Human Genetics is the primary professional membership organization for nearly 8,000 human genetics specialists worldwide. The ASHG Annual Meeting is the world's largest gathering of human genetics professionals and a forum for renowned experts in the field. For more information about ASHG, visit: http://www.ashg.org.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Cathy Yarbrough
press@ashg.org
858-243-1814
American Society of Human Genetics
A newly discovered potential gene-diet interaction for colorectal cancer was reported today (Thursday, Oct. 24) at the American Society of Human Genetics 2013 meeting in Boston. The interaction may shed light on the statistically significant increased risk of colorectal cancer that is associated with consumption of red and processed meat, the researchers said.
"If replicated, our findings have a relevant public health significance because diet is a modifiable risk factor for colorectal cancer," said Jane Figueiredo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, who presented the study this morning at the ASHG meeting.
"It is conceivable that selected individuals at higher risk of colorectal cancer based on genomic profiling could be targeted for screening, diet modification and other prevention strategies," added Dr. Figueiredo, one of the scientists collaborating in the international NIH-funded Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium (GECCO).
The scientists also determined that the lower colorectal cancer risk associated with vegetable, fruit and fiber intake also was linked to genetic variants.
The possibility that genetic variants may modify an individual's risk for disease based on diet has not been thoroughly investigated but represents an important new insight into disease development, said Ulrike Peters, Ph.D., M.P.H, who headed the study and is a Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Public Health Sciences Division in Seattle.
The study is the first colorectal cancer investigation with the statistical power to identify gene-dietary interactions across the genome of a large population of individuals, said Li Hsu, Ph.D., Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the study's lead biostatistician.
The study population totaled 9,287 patients with colorectal cancer and a control group of 9,117 individuals without cancer, all participants in 10 GECCO observational studies.
Scientists systematically searched 2.7 million variants to identify those that are associated with the consumption of red meat and processed meat as well as fruits and vegetables. The genetic sequences and information about the participants' medical history and diet are in the GECCO database.
A significant interaction between the genetic variant rs4143094 and processed meat consumption was detected. This variant is located on the same chromosome 10 region that includes GATA3, a transcription factor gene previously linked to several forms of cancer. The transcription factor encoded by this gene normally plays a role in the immune system.
On chromosome 8, a statistically significant diet-gene interaction was found in another variant, rs1269486. This variant was associated with reduced risk of colorectal cancer.
How specific foods affect the activities of genes has not been established. Drs. Peters and Figueiredo speculate that digestion of processed meat may promote an immunological or inflammatory response that may trigger tumor development. The GATA3 transcription factor normally would help suppress the immunological or inflammatory response. However, if the GATA3 gene region contains a mutation, it may encode a dysregulated transcription factor that impacts its ability to suppress the response.
In addition to uncovering a novel gene-diet interaction for colorectal cancer, the GECCO study may have important implications for understanding the underlying causes and biological pathways of cancer, said Dr. Peters.
"Our study highlights two genetic regions that are biologically interesting in cancer," she said, referring to the variants located near GATA3 and at 8q23.3.
"These genetic loci may have interesting biological significance given their location in the genome, and further functional analyses are required," said Dr. Peters.
The GECCO multi-institutional research team continues to investigate gene-diet interactions through independent studies on a well-characterized large cohort of European colorectal cancer patients and a collaboration with the Colorectal Cancer Trans-disciplinary study (CORECT) consortium.
"GECCO aims to continue to discover additional colorectal cancer-related variants by investigating how genetic variants are modified by other environmental and lifestyle risk factors, including biomarkers as well as how they influence patient treatment response and survival," Dr. Peters said.
Colorectal cancer is a multi-factorial disease attributed to lifestyle, environmental and genetic causes. Over 30 genetic susceptibility alleles for colorectal cancer have been pinpointed throughout the genome. They include rare variants that have a strong impact on risk and common variants that are low risk.
###
The scientists' ASHG abstract is titled, "Genome-wide analyses highlight gene interaction with processed meat and vegetable intake for colorectal cancer risk." Link to abstract online: http://www.ashg.org/2013meeting/abstracts/fulltext/f130123041.htm
About ASHG
The American Society of Human Genetics is the primary professional membership organization for nearly 8,000 human genetics specialists worldwide. The ASHG Annual Meeting is the world's largest gathering of human genetics professionals and a forum for renowned experts in the field. For more information about ASHG, visit: http://www.ashg.org.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
All appearances of condemnation aside, proponents of the Rubiniux X project are embarking on an effort to modernize the Ruby language, bringing it into the Internet era and focusing on improved concurrency.
A glance at the recent formal announcement of Rubinius X could give the impression it was written by a Ruby antagonist, as it belittles the language, saying, "Ruby is a dying language. Business is over its dalliance with Ruby. No major startup is lauding their use of Ruby, and existing businesses are migrating away or simply writing new applications in a different language."
But the engineer who unveiled Rubinius X, Brian Shirai, of Engine Yard, emphasized he is an advocate, not an opponent: "I love Ruby. I think it's a fantastic language."
Ruby, he said, is more accessible than newer languages like Scala, but it needs to be brought into the networked, Internet era. "The motivating idea behind Rubinius X today is that there are no computers that do anything interesting without talking to at least one other computer. The Internet is forever." But Ruby's core library was built back in the Windows 3.0 days in the 1990s, before Internet dominance, Shirai added. Rubinius X is focused on the writing of collaborative, concurrent applications.
Recently, Ruby founder Yukihiro Matsumoto said he saw no need for major improvements to Ruby in his CRuby implementation, but Rubinius X advocates will continue overhauling the language anyway. Rubinius X builds on Rubinius, an implementation of Ruby that also stressed concurrency via native threads, but version 10 takes concurrency a step further. "More than any specific feature in Rubinius X, it is that the entire system is being reworked from the bottom up to support the highest degree of concurrency and parallelism possible," Shirai said. "Certain APIs are being changed, further concurrency abstractions are being added, and all of this is built-in, instead of being an afterthought relegated to the 'standard library' or other libraries."
Key features of Rubinius X for concurrency include promises and nonblocking I/O. "Promises are a more modern mechanism for concurrency," Shirai said. Promises refer to constructs used for synchronizing in some languages, in which an object acts a proxy for result that is initially unknown, often because the computation of its value is not yet complete.
Version X also is slated to include persistent and concurrent data structures, as well as mirrors and object capabilities. Mirrors are a construct providing structure for composition through encapsulation and separation of object and meta-data object operations, according to Rubiniux X advocates; object capabilities structure interactions to control collaboration. Code-loading in Rubinius X, meanwhile, enables the combining of components into a single, running program.
Matsumoto gave an endorsement to Rubinius X, despite the criticism heaped on Ruby itself. "I am a true believer of diversity," he said. "So I consider Rubinius itself diversity." But Matsumoto said he was not sure Rubinius would survive. Still, he expects it to enrich the Ruby ecosystem.
"[Shirai] claimed 'Ruby is a dying language,' but as long as Ruby continues evolving, [including Rubinius], I think it will keep growing."
This story, "Rubinius seeks to modernize, not bury, the Ruby language," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
