Companion apps are nothing new, but while they can serve up bonus material for a TV show or medal counts for the Olympics, they can't see exactly what you're watching and display relevant information in realtime. Akamai's Hyperconnected Living Room concept demoed here at NAB aims to enhance the dual-screen experience by both pushing out on-demand movies and other streaming content and bringing related info to your slate, exactly when you'd expect to see it.
Akamai says it cooked up this demo especially for NAB "to get people thinking about the possibilities" of a second-screen experience. Those possibilities, if you haven't guessed, generally require you to open up your wallet. When Mission Impossible was playing on the big screen, pricing for a character's sunglasses popped up on the tablet. During a basketball game, we were prompted to buy tickets for an upcoming game. Depending on what you're watching, you may also see trivia from IMDB or links to players' stats.
To connect an iPad to the service, an Akamai rep simply signed into the web-based interface on both the TV and the tablet (though the service is generally compatible with any web-connected device). Once linked, the tablet can function as a remote for pausing and selecting content to stream, and users can personalize what ads and info they receive by providing details such as age, location and even clothing size. If you can't watch Mad Men without wondering where to buy Don Draper's fedora, you'll be all over the video demo below.
The massive problems of the patent system really started getting renewed attention between 2002 and 2004 or so, highlighted by the publication of the book Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System Is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner. By that point, the combination of two key events in the late 90s was clearly being felt on the patents system. First, and most importantly, was the impact of the State Street decision that announced to the world that the courts considered software and business method patents legal. Also important was the 1999 publication of Rembrandts in the Attic: Unlocking the Hidden Value of Patents by Kevin Rivette and David Kline, which led patent lawyers and tech companies alike to suddenly both ramp up their patenting, but also to look to sell off "unused" patents to companies (lawyers) who did nothing but threaten and sue over them. Suddenly, patent trolls became a big, big issue.
Around the time of the Jaffe and Lerner book, the USPTO seemed to actually take much of the criticism to heart. One big part of Jaffe and Lerner's criticism was the simple fact that patent examiners had significant incentives to approve patents, and almost none to reject patents. That is, the metrics by which they were measured included the rate of how many patent applications they processed. But, since there is no such thing as a truly final rejection of a patent, people would just keep asking the USPTO to look at their application again. Each time an examiner had to do this, their "rate" would decline, since they'd be spending even more time on the same old patent application. But approving a patent got it off your plate and let the court system sort out any mess. However, after the book was published, the USPTO actually seemed to pay attention and changed its internal incentives a bit to push for high quality approvals. Not surprisingly, this meant that the approval rate dropped. But, since there was more demand for bogus patents to sue over, more people appealed the rejections and the backlog grew.
Patent system lovers started whining about the "backlog," but what they were really pissed off about was the fact that their bogus patents weren't getting approved. Unfortunately, their message resonated with the new regime of the Obama administration, mainly Commerce Dept. boss, Gary Locke, and head of the USPTO, David Kappos. Back in 2010, we noted that the USPTO had shifted back to approving "pretty much anything" and had clearly decreased their quality standards in an effort to rush through the backlog. Not surprisingly, in stating this, we were attacked mercilessly by patent system supporters, who insisted that we were crazy, and the truth was that David Kappos had found some magic elixir that made all USPTO agents super efficient (or something like that -- their actual explanations were not much more coherent). No matter what, they insisted that it was entirely possible to massively ramp up the number of approvals, decrease the backlog and not decrease patent quality.
Needless to say, we've been skeptical that this was possible.
And now the data is in, suggesting we were absolutely right all along. A new study done by Chris Cotropia and Cecil Quillen of the University of Richmond and independent researcher Ogden Webster used information obtained via FOIA requests to delve into what was really going on in the patent office (link to a great summary of the research by Tim Lee). The key issue, is (once again) the fact that patents are never truly rejected in full, and the people applying for patents just keep on trying again and again until someone in the USPTO approves it. However, the USPTO, to hide some of this, counts some of those "rejections" that eventually get approved as "rejections" to artificially deflate the actual "approval rate" of patent applications.
When the researchers corrected for all of this, they found that the actual patent approval rate in 2012 was almost 90% of all patents eventually get approved. 90%! That's about where it was in 2004 and 2005 (as discussed above), though in 2001 it actually came close to 100%! However, as noted above, by the second half of 00's corrections had been put in place and the approval rate had declined to under 70% in 2009 -- meaning that the USPTO was actually rejecting bad patents. But over the past three years, we've shot right back up. And it's clear that if the approval rate is much higher, the USPTO is approving many, many more bad patents.
In fact, it's likely that the story is even worse than before. Back in 2004 and 2005 when the approval rates were similar, it was really before the public was aware of just how bad the patent troll problem was, so you had many fewer people trying to get their own bad patents to troll over. In the past five years or so that has changed quite a bit. So the number of applications has shot up massively as well. In 2004 there were 382,139 applications. By 2011 that had shot up by 50% to 576,763.
I don't think anyone thinks that we suddenly became 50% more inventive between 2004 and 2011. No, the truth is that people were suddenly flooding the USPTO with highly questionable patent applications on broad and vague concepts, hoping to get a lottery ticket to shake down actual innovators. And, the USPTO under David Kappos complied, granting nearly all of them. Incredible.
When Thomas Jefferson put together the first patent system -- after being quite skeptical that patents could actually be a good thing -- he was quite careful to note that patents should only be granted in the rarest of circumstances, since such a monopoly could do a lot more harm than good. And yet, today, we encourage tons of people to send in any old bogus idea, and the USPTO has turned into little more than a rubber stamp of approval, allowing patent holders to shake down tons of people and companies, knowing that many will pay up rather than fight, and then leaving the few cases where someone fights back to be handled by the courts (who seem ignorant of the game being played).
The end result is a true disaster for actual innovation and the economy. We should all be able to agree that bad patents are not a good thing. And the USPTO is, undoubtedly, approving tons of awful patents when its true approval rate is hovering around 90%.
A recent study has shown that bottom-dwelling goosefish, also known as monkfish, prey on dovekies, a small Arctic seabird and the smallest member of the puffin family. To understand how this deep-water fish finds a shallow-feeding bird in offshore waters, researchers looked at when, where, and how these animals were most likely to be in the same place at the same time.
Remains of fourteen dovekie were recovered from the stomachs of 14 goosefish caught during the winters between 2007 and 2010. The goosefish were captured in gillnets deployed at depths between 275 and 495 feet in waters 65 to 95 miles south of Chatham, Mass. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association collected the specimens and provided them for the research study.
Researchers from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Mass. and the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., wanted to know how the birds could be captured so far from shore by a fish that lives on the ocean bottom in deep water. Their findings, recently published online in the Northeastern Naturalist, suggest that it is all a matter of timing.
Goosefish (Lophius americanus) are highly opportunistic predators. Distributed from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, N.C., the fish are typically partially buried on soft bottom habitats and attract a variety of prey by using a modified dorsal fin ray that resembles a fishing pole and lure.
Dovekies, a small black and white puffin species, breed along the Arctic coast and head south in the winter, typically as far as New England. The dovekie (Alle alle), also known as little auk, is the smallest of the auks. It lives in the open ocean and can dive to depths o more than 100 feet to prey on small fish, crustaceans, and zooplankton.
Study co-author Anne Richards of the NEFSC says tagging studies that she and colleagues have conducted reveal that goosefish swim considerable vertical distances from the bottom to near the surface, especially during their spring and fall migrations onshore and offshore in response to water temperatures and related factors.
Goosefish leave the bottom to use the currents during migration periods or to spawn at the surface. If prey items are encountered during their vertical movements, the goosefish take advantage. Hence, timing may be the key factor in bringing dovekies and goosefish together in the same place.
"Given the common name 'goosefish', it is not surprising to find birds in goosefish stomachs, but it is surprising to find that this predation occurs over deep water, "Richards said. "Goosefish do not actively seek out the dovekies, but when such tasty morsels are available in the water column, the fish are going to consume them."
Another source of data used in the study is the NOAA NEFSC food-habits database, which contains decades of predation information collected from the stomachs of fish that are caught during regular research vessel surveys. While not a particularly good measure of how often or how many birds are eaten by fish, these data confirm that not only goosefish, but also spiny dogfish, Atlantic herring, pollock, Atlantic cod, red hake, and fourspot flounder will eat birds.
Lead author Matthew Perry, a research wildlife biologist at the USGS Patuxtent Wildlife Research Center, says he became interested in goosefish predation when he learned from a sea scalloper on Nantucket that Chatham gillnetters were finding birds inside goosefish stomachs.
"I was studying long-tailed ducks and thought, to avoid being eaten, these birds fly 30 to 50 miles to Nantucket Sound each night and return to the ocean in the morning," said Perry, who studies several species of seaducks. "People ask why don't dovekies fly to Nantucket Sound at night like the long-tailed ducks to avoid goosefish? My explanation is that dovekies have small wings and can't make the routine flight."
"One thing we know is that dovekies cannot dive to the bottom in 300 to 400 feet of water," Perry said. "Goosefish probably come up from the ocean bottom to within 10 to 20 feet of the water surface at night. As dovekies dive for amphipods, small crustaceans, in the morning at first light, goosefish seize the opportunity and might use their 'fishing lure' to simulate one of these prey species by attracting the dovekies with their typical 'sit and wait' behavior."
The magnitude of fish predation on seabirds is poorly understood. Perry says most food habit studies for goosefish have been conducted during summer when the dovekies have migrated north to their Arctic breeding areas; thus, they seldom have been recorded as prey. Perry hopes more telemetry tracking of goosefish will be done in winter when birds are in the area and are potential prey.
As for what's ahead, Richards says ongoing use of electronic tags on goosefish will provide more information on their vertical movements.
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Goosefish capture small puffins over deep water of Northwest AtlanticPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
A recent study has shown that bottom-dwelling goosefish, also known as monkfish, prey on dovekies, a small Arctic seabird and the smallest member of the puffin family. To understand how this deep-water fish finds a shallow-feeding bird in offshore waters, researchers looked at when, where, and how these animals were most likely to be in the same place at the same time.
Remains of fourteen dovekie were recovered from the stomachs of 14 goosefish caught during the winters between 2007 and 2010. The goosefish were captured in gillnets deployed at depths between 275 and 495 feet in waters 65 to 95 miles south of Chatham, Mass. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association collected the specimens and provided them for the research study.
Researchers from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Mass. and the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., wanted to know how the birds could be captured so far from shore by a fish that lives on the ocean bottom in deep water. Their findings, recently published online in the Northeastern Naturalist, suggest that it is all a matter of timing.
Goosefish (Lophius americanus) are highly opportunistic predators. Distributed from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, N.C., the fish are typically partially buried on soft bottom habitats and attract a variety of prey by using a modified dorsal fin ray that resembles a fishing pole and lure.
Dovekies, a small black and white puffin species, breed along the Arctic coast and head south in the winter, typically as far as New England. The dovekie (Alle alle), also known as little auk, is the smallest of the auks. It lives in the open ocean and can dive to depths o more than 100 feet to prey on small fish, crustaceans, and zooplankton.
Study co-author Anne Richards of the NEFSC says tagging studies that she and colleagues have conducted reveal that goosefish swim considerable vertical distances from the bottom to near the surface, especially during their spring and fall migrations onshore and offshore in response to water temperatures and related factors.
Goosefish leave the bottom to use the currents during migration periods or to spawn at the surface. If prey items are encountered during their vertical movements, the goosefish take advantage. Hence, timing may be the key factor in bringing dovekies and goosefish together in the same place.
"Given the common name 'goosefish', it is not surprising to find birds in goosefish stomachs, but it is surprising to find that this predation occurs over deep water, "Richards said. "Goosefish do not actively seek out the dovekies, but when such tasty morsels are available in the water column, the fish are going to consume them."
Another source of data used in the study is the NOAA NEFSC food-habits database, which contains decades of predation information collected from the stomachs of fish that are caught during regular research vessel surveys. While not a particularly good measure of how often or how many birds are eaten by fish, these data confirm that not only goosefish, but also spiny dogfish, Atlantic herring, pollock, Atlantic cod, red hake, and fourspot flounder will eat birds.
Lead author Matthew Perry, a research wildlife biologist at the USGS Patuxtent Wildlife Research Center, says he became interested in goosefish predation when he learned from a sea scalloper on Nantucket that Chatham gillnetters were finding birds inside goosefish stomachs.
"I was studying long-tailed ducks and thought, to avoid being eaten, these birds fly 30 to 50 miles to Nantucket Sound each night and return to the ocean in the morning," said Perry, who studies several species of seaducks. "People ask why don't dovekies fly to Nantucket Sound at night like the long-tailed ducks to avoid goosefish? My explanation is that dovekies have small wings and can't make the routine flight."
"One thing we know is that dovekies cannot dive to the bottom in 300 to 400 feet of water," Perry said. "Goosefish probably come up from the ocean bottom to within 10 to 20 feet of the water surface at night. As dovekies dive for amphipods, small crustaceans, in the morning at first light, goosefish seize the opportunity and might use their 'fishing lure' to simulate one of these prey species by attracting the dovekies with their typical 'sit and wait' behavior."
The magnitude of fish predation on seabirds is poorly understood. Perry says most food habit studies for goosefish have been conducted during summer when the dovekies have migrated north to their Arctic breeding areas; thus, they seldom have been recorded as prey. Perry hopes more telemetry tracking of goosefish will be done in winter when birds are in the area and are potential prey.
As for what's ahead, Richards says ongoing use of electronic tags on goosefish will provide more information on their vertical movements.
###
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?
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.
Apr. 9, 2013 ? Researchers have discovered that using two kinds of therapy in tandem may be a knockout combo against inherited disorders that cause blindness. While their study focused on man's best friend, the treatment could help restore vision in people, too.
Published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the study builds on earlier work by Michigan State University veterinary ophthalmologist Andr?s Kom?romy and colleagues. In 2010, they restored day vision in dogs suffering from achromatopsia, an inherited form of total color blindness, by replacing the mutant gene associated with the condition.
While that treatment was effective for most younger dogs, it didn't work for canines older than 1 year. Kom?romy began to wonder if the older dogs' cones -- the photoreceptor cells in the retina that process daylight and color -- might be too worn out.
"Gene therapy only works if the nonfunctional cell that is primarily affected by the disease is not too degenerated," he said. "That's how we came up with the idea for this new study. How about if we selectively destroy the light-sensitive part of the cones and let it grow back before performing gene therapy? Then you'd have a younger, less degenerated cell that may be more responsive to therapy."
So, Kom?romy and colleagues recruited more dogs with achromatopsia between 1 and 3 years old. To test their theory, they again performed gene therapy but first gave some of the dogs a dose of a protein called CNTF, which the central nervous system produces to keep cells healthy. At a high enough dose, its effect on photoreceptors is a bit like pruning flowers: It partially destroys them, but allows for new growth.
"It was a long shot," said Kom?romy, associate professor in MSU's Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences.
But it worked.
"We were just amazed at what we found," he said. "All seven dogs that got the combination treatment responded, regardless of age."
While achromatopsia is quite rare, Kom?romy said it's a good model disease for other disorders affecting the photoreceptors, conditions that constitute a major cause of incurable blindness in dogs and humans. Those disorders affect individuals of both species in much the same way, so the combination treatment's promise isn't just for Fido.
"Based on our results we are proposing a new concept of retinal therapy," he said. "One treatment option alone might not be enough to reverse vision loss, but a combination therapy can maximize therapeutic success."
The research was funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and University of Miami also participated in the study.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Michigan State University.
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Journal Reference:
Andr?s M Kom?romy, Jessica S Rowlan, Amanda T Parton Corr, Shelby L Reinstein, Sanford L Boye, Ann E Cooper, Amaliris Gonzalez, Britt Levy, Rong Wen, William W Hauswirth, William A Beltran, Gustavo D Aguirre. Transient Photoreceptor Deconstruction by CNTF Enhances rAAV-Mediated Cone Functional Rescue in Late Stage CNGB3-Achromatopsia. Molecular Therapy, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/mt.2013.50
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Amid the myriad tributes to conservative icon Margaret Thatcher, Texas Congressman Steve Stockman definitely stands out as the most hardcore ? and combative ? fan of the former British Prime Minister.?
After learning of Thatcher's death this morning, Stockman tweeted this conservative call-to-arms:?
Twitter/@SteveWorks4You
He elaborated in an extensive statement posted to his House website, using Thatcher's death as an opportunity to slam President Barack Obama and other "leftists."
Here's the full text:?
This morning we mark the loss of one of the greatest champions of human freedom, Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who as the United Kingdom?s first female Prime Minister led a nation out of economic misery and into a new age of strength and prosperity.
Like Barack Obama, Baroness Thatcher inherited a country that was demoralized, economically broken and bankrupted by expansive government.? Unlike Obama, Baroness Thatcher restored prosperity and optimism.? Where Obama has failed, Baroness Thatcher succeeded.? While Obama forges chains of dependency and government bloat, Baroness Thatcher took a sledgehammer to the machinery of liberalism.? Baroness Thatcher?s record of creating explosive economic growth and a stronger nation by embracing conservative values makes the utter failure of Obama?s stale liberalism starker and more disturbing.
Baroness Thatcher created prosperity by rejecting politics of consensus demanded by her liberal opponents, which she derided as ?the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.?? She believed in one thing, the power of human freedom to improve lives, create prosperity and renew a nation?s spirit.
She is still hated by leftists who would rather live in equalized misery than allow people to achieve as much as they can work for, leftists who now hold the levers of government in the United States and hurl personal invectives because they cannot deny she left her countrymen stronger and more prosperous.
While many mourn, Baroness Thatcher reminded us ?I fight on I fight to win.?? The best way to honor Baroness Thatcher is to crush liberalism and sweep it into the dustbin of history. What are you doing this morning to defeat liberal politicians?
Buckle up ? climate change could make this a bumpy flight.
That's according to a newly published study by two British scientists who say increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will make "clear air turbulence" ? which can't be easily spotted by pilots or satellites ? more common over the North Atlantic. That means the potential for gut-wrenching flights between the U.S., Europe and points east.
According to Scientific American, researchers Paul D. Williams and Manoj M. Joshi, "used computer simulations to fast-forward to the year 2050. They fed that future climate data to 21 turbulence-predicting algorithms."
According to the BBC:
"The modelling suggested the average strength of transatlantic turbulence could increase by between 10% and 40%, and the amount of airspace likely to contain significant turbulence by between 40% and 170%, where the most likely outcome is around 100%. In other words, a doubling of the amount of airspace affected.
" 'The probability of moderate or greater turbulence increases by 10.8%,' said Dr Williams."
The possible consequences go beyond mere passenger discomfort and could well show up on the bottom line for airlines, Williams tells the BBC.
"It's certainly plausible that if flights get diverted more to fly around turbulence rather than through it then the amount of fuel that needs to be burnt will increase," Williams says. "Fuel costs money, which airlines have to pay, and ultimately it could of course be passengers buying their tickets who see the prices go up."
Some 600 flights crisscross the North Atlantic corridor each day, according to the BBC reports.
Apr. 6, 2013 ? Researchers using a tool called BEAMing technology, which can detect cancer-driving gene mutations in patients' blood samples, were able to identify oncogenic mutations associated with distinct responses to therapies used to treat patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), according to a researcher who presented the data at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, held in Washington D.C., April 6-10.
Data from a subanalysis of the phase III GIST-Regorafenib In Progressive Disease (GRID) trial indicated that this blood-based screening technology may provide physicians with a real-time, comprehensive picture of a patient's tumor mutations, according to George D. Demetri, M.D., director of the Ludwig Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.
"Our results show that it is possible to sum the total of all of the heterogeneity in a cancer and get a clear picture of the entire tumor burden, using a simple blood sample," Demetri said.
In this era of targeted cancer therapies, the goal is to focus cancer treatments on a specific molecular target. However, as researchers discover more about cancers and their heterogeneity, they are finding many patients have anywhere from one to dozens of different mutations in their tumors.
"It is a real issue that when you do a biopsy on one tumor, and then biopsy a different tumor in that same patient a few inches away or on the other side of the body, you may get a different answer when you do the molecular analysis," Demetri said. "With this blood test, you get a robust summary statement about all the different mutations present across the different tumors in the body. I believe this testing technology has promise to become a standard part of care in the next five to 10 years."
Data from the main analysis of the phase III GRID study showed that the molecularly targeted drug regorafenib significantly improved progression-free survival compared with placebo for patients with GIST. The researchers hope these results will ultimately lead to the drug's approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to Demetri. The drug is intended to treat patients with advanced GIST whose disease has failed to be controlled by the only two other FDA-approved therapies for GIST, imatinib and sunitinib (Sutent).
Demetri and colleagues conducted an exploratory analysis on patients in the GRID study to assess GIST genotypes. They isolated DNA from archival tumor tissue, which was then analyzed for mutations in two genes, KIT and PDGFRA, which generate the cancer-driving proteins that are the targets of imatinib, sunitinib and regorafenib. The researchers believed that primary mutations would be detectable using traditional analysis, but that those mutations that developed after treatment with imatinib and sunitinib would not be detectable. They then took blood samples drawn at study entry after failure of both imatinib and sunitinib, and analyzed them for mutations via BEAMing technology.
Mutations in the KIT gene were detected in 60 percent of the blood samples compared with 65 percent of the tumor tissue samples. However, when focusing their analysis on secondary KIT mutations, which are the mutations that drive resistance to targeted therapies like imatinib and sunitinib, the researchers found mutations in 48 percent of blood samples compared with only 12 percent of tissue samples. In addition, nearly half of blood samples in which secondary KIT mutations were found harbored multiple secondary mutations.
Importantly, regorafenib was clinically active compared with placebo in patients with secondary KIT mutations.
According to Demetri, the results show a clear association between the presence of different cancer-driving gene mutations in patients' blood samples and clinical outcomes.
"By using this technology, we hope to develop the most rational drug combinations and better tests to match patients with the most effective therapies going forward," Demetri said.
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Public release date: 10-Apr-2013
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