More than six months after Ron Johnson's departure, Apple has finally found a new retail chief to replace him, in one John Browett. The Cambridge- and Wharton-educated Browett comes to Cupertino after serving nearly five years as CEO of Dixons -- the Taj Mahal of British retail. Before that, he held a smattering of obscurely defined "executive positions" at Tesco plc and advised retail clients at Boston Consulting Group. In a statement, Apple CEO Tim Cook lauded his company's latest appointee, citing his "incredible retail experience" and commitment to customer service. Read more in the PR after the break.
1. Black, pollution filled boogers that start in Kathmandu will only increase with severity as you head towards Delhi. Bring an abundance of anti-bacterial wipes and shove those bad boys straight up your nostrils as needed.
2. As an American tourist traveling in a group of non-Americans, be prepared constantly to defend, apologize for and explain the intricacies of your crazy ass country.
3. If you think you are in the Lonely Planet's highly recommended Brown Bread Bakery in Varanasi, India - you know, the one that donates its proceeds to a local school for disadvantaged youth, then you are probably in the FAKE and extremely dirty Brown Bread Bakery that is literally 10 yards away from the real thing. The fake Brown Bread Bakery preys on your benevolence and keeps the proceeds all for their damn selves. The real Brown Bread Bakery looks delicious.
4. Public urination. Get used to it.
5. The kids are cute, friendly, and excited to practice their English by conversing with you. Bring pens and hand them out to the local kids as you go. It's an inexpensive and appreciated.
6. The foods I swooned over...tomato sorba: a thin soup filled with hot spices, toasted cumin seeds and cilantro. Gajar halwa: a grated carrot desert resplendent with butter, cream and spice. Poori: the most delicious fried bread in the known universe. The ginger lemon honey, which is, you guessed it, a hot drink made with fresh lemon, honey & grated ginger. And my personal favorite: a traditional mulled wine, the perfect way to warm up after a day of trekking on the cold evenings in Nepal, especially great to drink by the many open fires that virtually every restaurant in Pokhara had in their backyard patios.
7. Riding on elephants gives me the sads. That was one tourist experience I had to pass on.
8. There are many times when I was in the poorest sections of India that I struggled to justify why I would travel to a place with such dramatic poverty for my own amusement.
9. Which leads me to...I suck at haggling! It's hard to haggle someone down from $2 to .50 cents for a yak wool blanket I'd probably pay $25 for in the States.
10. Two hotels I'd return to without hesitation: Orchha Resort in India and the Sapana Lodge in Chitwan National Park. At Orchha Resort we stayed at luxury tents located behind a set of gorgeous historic temples. Sapana Lodge was centered in a gorgeous village and had tons of activities from elephant washing to energetic bike rides through the national park. In addition to charming facilities in a beautiful setting, Sapana is a non-profit that uses the proceeds to benefit the local villagers through a variety of community development programs, so you can feel good about splurging on an after dinner hot chocolate under the stars, or learning to make momos from their onsite chef.
The Kathmandu to Delhi tour was courtesy of G Adventures. You can read more about it here.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at Pioneer Park in Dunedin, Fla., Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at Pioneer Park in Dunedin, Fla., Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets an audience member as he campaigns at Ring Power Lift Trucks in Jacksonville, Fla., Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012, in Pensacola, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney throws bags of chips at traveling reporters on his campaign charter plane in Jacksonville, Fla., Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his wife Callista, campaign at The Villages, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, in Lady Lake, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
MIAMI (AP) ? Cheered by new polls, Mitt Romney is all but predicting victory in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary. Newt Gingrich is looking past Florida to regroup, vowing he won't stay buried long.
"With a turnout like this, I'm beginning to feel we might win tomorrow," an upbeat Romney told a crowd of several hundred at a stop in Dunedin on Monday as he and Gingrich zipped across the state making their final appeals.
Gingrich, in turn, acknowledged that his momentum had been checked but promised not to back down. He characterized Romney as an imposter, and his team started to plot a strategy for upcoming contests.
"He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money," Gingrich said in a television interview. "In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican."
GOP officials in Florida were anticipating a big turnout, more than 2 million voters, up from a record 1.9 million in the Republican primary in 2008. More than 605,000 Floridians had already voted as of Monday, either by visiting early voting stations or by mailing in absentee ballots, ahead of the total combined early vote in the GOP primary four years ago.
In the span of a volatile week, the tables have turned in this potentially pivotal primary state.
Gingrich rode a triumphant wave into Florida after a South Carolina victory nine days ago. But since then, Romney and his allies have pummeled the former House speaker on TV and on the campaign trail. Romney turned in two strong debate performances, while Gingrich faltered. Now opinion polls show the former Massachusetts governor with a comfortable lead here.
Romney and Gingrich have been the only two candidates to compete in Florida in earnest. Neither former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum nor Texas Rep. Ron. Paul campaigned much in the state, and they were elsewhere on Monday.
Clearly in command, Romney flew to stops in media markets in northern Florida and the populous swing regions of central Florida, determined to keep Gingrich from surging late.
Romney renewed attacks on his rival as an untrustworthy, Washington influence peddler at the outset of two separate appearances Monday. He claimed that Gingrich's ties to federally backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac have hurt the former speaker in a state wracked by the foreclosure crisis.
"He made $1.6 million in his company, the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis here in Florida," Romney said in Dunedin. Gingrich's consulting firm received more than $1.5 million from the federally backed mortgage giant over a period after he left Congress in 1999.
Gingrich plowed ahead, flying to stops in northern Florida starting in Jacksonville ? near his home state of Georgia ? before touching down in conservative Pensacola and then Tampa.
Along the way, he tried to rally conservatives by casting Romney as an imposter and himself as the true GOP stalwart. His claim to conservative principles wasn't limited to economic issues.
"No politician, no judge, no bureaucrat can come between you and God," Gingrich told an audience in Tampa. "I'm a little bit tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet."
Gingrich, who has sought to wrap himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, campaigned with the late president's son Michael. He was also joined by former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who endorsed him Sunday.
A win by Romney would again reset the 2012 GOP race, seen early this month as his to lose, then thrown into doubt by Gingrich's come-from-behind win in South Carolina.
Romney easily won the New Hampshire primary after nearly winning the in leadoff Iowa. The South Carolina setback behind him, Romney sought to aggressively stop Gingrich, aided by a well-funded political action committee that supports him and is run by former political aides.
Together, Romney's campaign and the supportive group Restore Our Future have combined to spend $6.8 million on television ads in the final week of the Florida campaign, about three times what Gingrich and a group supporting him have spent.
Romney capped his Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina campaigns with upbeat spots. Nothing doing in Florida, where he was running out the clock with ads attacking Gingrich over Freddie Mac and an ethics violation in Congress.
But Romney dropped any reference to Gingrich at his final stop Monday at The Villages in central Florida. And instead of reciting the lyrics of "America the Beautiful," as he typically does, Romney ? on pitch ? broke into song and led the crowd in a reverent rendition.
Rick Tyler, a former top Gingrich aide now running a pro-Gingrich political action committee, showed up at Romney's kickoff event in Jacksonville on Monday, stealing a page from Romney's Florida playbook.
"I'm here to get as many cameras and microphones so I can talk about Mitt Romney's incessant failure to tell the truth," Tyler said.
Gingrich said he was confident he could narrow Romney's margin in public voter surveys, even as he and his campaign began trying to soften the blow a defeat in Florida might bring.
Gingrich aides tried to diminish the state's impact on the quest for the nomination by issuing a memo from his political director, Martin Baker.
It noted that by Wednesday morning, only 5 percent of the 2,288 national convention delegates will have been awarded.
Gingrich, who has promised to campaign through the national convention this summer, was clearly looking to regroup after Florida.
"The campaign is shifting to a new phase where opportunities are not limited to a single state," Baker wrote.
Gingrich had not announced his plans for Wednesday. Romney, who has already begun advertising in next-up Nevada ahead of the state's Feb. 4 caucuses, was traveling there Wednesday, and to Minnesota, which holds its caucuses on Feb. 7.
___
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in The Villages, Shannon McCaffrey in Tampa and Brendan Farrington in Miami contributed to this report.
AMES, Iowa ? Royce White had 18 points and nine rebounds as Iowa State upset fifth-ranked Kansas 72-64 on Saturday, snapping the Jayhawks' winning streak at 10 games.
Melvin Ejim added 15 points for the Cyclones (15-6, 5-3 Big 12), who had lost 13 straight to Kansas since their last victory in 2005.
White, a 39 percent free thrower shooter in Big 12 games, hit a pair to put Iowa State up 64-59 with 1:47 left. Kansas threw the ball away and Chris Babb drained a 3 to give the Cyclones an eight-point lead with 55.6 seconds left.
Tyshawn Taylor led five players in double figures with 16 points for Kansas (17-4, 7-1), which hadn't lost since Dec. 19 against Davidson. Thomas Robinson had 13 points, but he committed five turnovers and the Jayhawks were outrebounded 36-23.
Iowa State students celebrated the biggest win of coach Fred Hoiberg's tenure by storming the floor.
This was Kansas' toughest true road test of the year so far ? and it ended with the Jayhawks' first true road loss of the season.
Kansas caught the Cyclones napping to start the second half and took its biggest lead to that point, 45-39, thanks to an 11-0 run. But big man Anthony Booker brought Iowa State back, sinking a rare 3-pointer to put the Cyclones ahead 50-49 with 12:13 left.
Neither team could get much going over the next 6 minutes, but Tyrus McGee's three-point play gave Iowa State a 56-53 lead with just over 6 minutes left. Robinson then blew an open dunk and White hit two layups ? one a reverse he spun off the glass ? to make it 60-55 Iowa State with 3:42 left.
White also had five assists, and Scott Christopherson finished with 14 points for the Cyclones.
Iowa State fed off the energy of its second sellout crowd of the year and jumped on the Jayhawks early.
Booker drilled a 3 and Babb followed with a steal and layup that put Iowa State ahead 19-11, prompting Kansas coach Bill Self to call timeout.
Kansas finally took a 31-29 lead on an impressive scoop through traffic from Taylor with 3:31 left before the break. Iowa State rallied to grab the halftime advantage, 37-33, despite committing 13 turnovers in the first 20 minutes.
The Cyclones led in part because of their defense on Robinson. He was 1-of-6 shooting in the first half and traveled three times trying to free himself up for shots in the paint.
Kansas certainly knew what Iowa State was capable of after the Cyclones threw a scare into the Jayhawks in Lawrence two weeks ago.
Iowa State led at halftime back on Jan. 14 and pushed its lead to as many as 12 points before Kansas stormed back for an 82-73 win. The Cyclones might have been able to pull off that upset had they shot better than 2 of 15 from 3-point range in the second half.
Iowa State didn't let the opportunity pass by this time around ? and it now has a marquee win that will look great on its resume come March.
It's not the smallest transistor out there, but the boffins at IBM have constructed the tiniest carbon nanotube transistor to date. It's nine nanometers in size, making it one nanometer smaller than the presumed physical limit of silicon transistors. Plus, it consumes less power and is able to carry more current than present-day technology. The researchers accomplished the trick by laying a nanotube on a thin layer of insulation, and using a two-step process -- involving some sort of black magic, no doubt -- to add the electrical gates inside. The catch? (There's always a catch) Manufacturing pure batches of semiconducting nanotubes is difficult, as is aligning them in such a way that the transistors can function. So, it'll be some time before the technology can compete with Intel's 3D silicon, but at least we're one step closer to carbon-based computing.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) ? Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen's party was expected to sweep Senate elections Sunday in a vote that is closed to the general population and criticized for lacking credibility.
The country's 61-member upper house of Parliament is chosen by local officials and members of the National Assembly, or lower house. Two seats are appointed by King Norodom Sihamoni and two by the National Assembly.
At the last Senate election in 2006, the ruling Cambodian People's Party won 45 seats, followed by the royalist Funcinpec party with 10. Two seats went to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party.
The Senate has no power to amend or veto legislation and is widely seen as an ineffectual body that rubber-stamps bills from the lower house, which the ruling party dominates.
ST. LOUIS ? Since the Iraq War ended there has been little fanfare for the veterans returning home. No ticker-tape parades. No massive, flag-waving public celebrations.
So, two friends from St. Louis decided to change that. They sought donations, launched a Facebook page, met with the mayor and mapped a route. On Saturday, hundreds of veterans are expected to march in downtown St. Louis in the nation's first big welcome home parade since the last troops left Iraq in December.
"It struck me that there was this debate going on as to whether there should or shouldn't be a parade," said Tom Appelbaum, one of the organizers. "Instead of waiting around for somebody somewhere to say, `Yes, let's have a parade,' we said, `Let's just do it.'"
Appelbaum, a 46-year-old lawyer, and Craig Schneider, a 41-year-old school technology coordinator, said they were puzzled by the lack of celebrations marking the war's end. But, they wondered, if St. Louis could host thousands of people for a parade after their beloved Cardinals won the World Series, why couldn't there be a party for the troops who put their lives on the line?
The effort got help with donations from two corporations with St. Louis connections ? $10,000 from Anheuser-Busch and $7,500 from the Mayflower moving company. Individual donations have boosted the project's total budget to about $35,000. By comparison, more than $5 million was spent two decades ago on New York's welcome-home parade for Gulf War veterans who helped drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Ticker-tape salutes to returning troops are part of the American culture, including parades in many cities honoring veterans of World War I and World War II.
Since the end of the latest Iraq War, there have only been small events at military posts, gatherings of families at airports and a low-key appearance by President Barack Obama at Fort Bragg, N.C., a base that endured more than 200 deaths from fighting in the war.
"Many communities across the country are finding ways to recognize the service and sacrifice of our troops and their families," said Maj. Chris Perrine, a spokesman for the Defense Department. "We are certainly encouraged by that and grateful for it."
Celebrating the end of the Iraq War isn't as simple as the outpourings after the world wars, said Wayne Fields, professor of English and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. With 91,000 troops still fighting the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, many Iraq veterans could be redeployed ? suggesting to some that it's premature to celebrate their homecoming.
"We're not celebrating the end of a war the way we were with V-E Day or V-J Day (after World War II)," Fields said. "Part of what this is trying to do is recognize the special service of those who were there even though we can't declare a victory over a clearly identified enemy."
In May 2003, President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to hail the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Behind him during that speech was a banner that read, "Mission Accomplished," yet U.S. troops remained in Iraq for 8 1/2 more years.
Even some of the festivities in St. Louis will serve as a reminder that Bush launched the Iraq War as part of the larger war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
As part of the weekend, a "Reading of the Fallen" will begin at 9:11 p.m. Friday at Soldiers Memorial downtown. It will continue until the names of the approximate 6,500 Americans killed since the attacks are read.
"Veterans have sacrificed so much for the safety and well-being of St. Louisans," Mayor Francis Slay said. "This is a chance to demonstrate our appreciation for them."
City officials agreed to waive permit fees and allow use of streets for the parade from the heart of downtown along Market Street to Union Station, the former train station that is now a shopping center and hotel. A "Resource Village" will be set up there that will include food, music and entertainment but will also connect returning vets with organizations to help ease transition to civilian life.
Organizers expect about 100 parade entries ? floats, marching bands, first-responders, veterans groups. Appelbaum said that while the parade marks the end of the Iraq War, any military personnel involved in post-Sept. 11 conflicts are welcome.
Appelbaum has no idea how many people will turn out to cheer on the troops but said response has been overwhelming despite the lack of any substantial marketing.
"It's significant that this is strictly a grassroots effort, and coming out of the heartland of the U.S., I think it really says something," he said.
AT&T is all smiles again, as it announces a quarter in which it managed to sell 9.4 million smartphones. It nearly doubled handset sales from Q3 and managed -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- 7.6 million iPhone activations, with the majority being Apple's latest flavor of phone. It looks like the loss of its exclusivity tag hasn't hurt its sales, with Ma Bell quick to note that it sold far more iPhones than its Big Red rival. Total consolidated revenues were up $1.1 billion from last year, that's a 3.6 percent increase and it's up just over $1 billion from last quarter. However, due to the failed T-Mobile acquisition (and the subsequent pay-off) net income was a loss of $6.7 billion, with $4.2 billion of this going to its previously potential partner. Aside from bumper smartphone sales, AT&T's attributed its revenue increases to a year-on-year increase in wireless subscriptions in all their forms -- including wireless internet. An additional 208,000 AT&T U-verse TV subscribers has tipped the viewer count to 3.8 million. See AT&T's own take on its results below.
European Internet users may be getting better control over information posted online, thanks to some proposed sweeping reforms lawmakers proposed Wednesday designed to protect digital privacy. The suggested law calls for a "right to be forgotten" and a "right to data portability." The former would require Internet companies such as Facebook and Google to completely wipe all of a user's info from their servers if such a request was made. The latter demands users be allowed to easily transfer data from one online service to another, a currently difficult task.
[More from Mashable: Google Thinks I?m a Middle-Aged Man. What About You?]
The "right to be forgotten" wouldn't be granted to users attempting to remove information relevant to a criminal investigation.
All online businesses operating in Europe would be bound to the new rules, whether or not they're based on the continent. Should web services fail to comply with these rights, they would be slapped with fines of up to ?1 million or up to 2% of the global annual turnover of a company (The total value of all products made in a 12-month period).
[More from Mashable: 10 Simple Google Calendar Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Productivity]
In the past, European Union (EU) member states have issued varying interpretations on existing digital privacy laws. Those different analyses have resulted in discordant levels of enforcement from country to country. If passed, this law would unify all 27 EU member states under a single set of privacy rules.
The EU argues this Europe-wide standardization would save businesses money by providing a sole definitive source of online privacy law for the continent. However, many internet companies depend on access to users' data for advertisement revenue.
A spokesman for European Union justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, told the BBC that the proposed laws are a means of protecting children and young adults who share details online which they later want removed for professional or personal reasons.
"These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social network websites, or about the various privacy settings available," said spokesman Matthew Newman.
SEE ALSO: European Politicians Didn?t Like SOPA Any More Than You [VIDEO]
For the proposed new rules to become European law, they will need approval from the EU's member states followed by ratification from European Parliament. That process may take up to two years.
Do you think Internet users should be granted a "right to be forgotten?" Let us know in the comments below.
Your inner geek will smile the next time you board a Virgin America flight. After all, there's a chance that you'll be stepping onto a plane that is named in honor of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Virgin America's Abby Lunardini explained to me that one of the airline's jets ? an Airbus A320 ? has "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"?stenciled on its nose as the result of an internal plane naming competition which was run in the fall of 2011. At that time, the aircraft name was submitted?"as a tribute" to Jobs by one of Virgin America's employees. The plane entered service late last year.
The phrase is a frequently quoted line from the commencement address delivered by Jobs at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.?During his speech, he explained that he saw those words on the issue of "The Whole Earth Catalog," a counterculture publication ? and that they resonated throughout his life:
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
As?Lunardini pointed out to me, Virgin America is the only airline based in Silicon Valley, the home of Apple. All the more fitting.
Oh, and in case you're under the impression that "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" is a strange name for a plane, then boy-oh-boy have I got news for you.
According to the folks at Planespotters.net, a site dedicated to keeping track of all sorts of airline related details, Virgin America?has planes with names such as "the 1-year-old virgin," "let there be flight," "Virgin & Tonic," Air Colbert," "my other ride is a spaceship," Arnold," "#nerdbird," "Superfly," and so on.
"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" will fit right in.
Related stories:
Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.
(Reuters) ? The Federal Reserve took the historic step on Wednesday of setting an inflation target, a victory for Chairman Ben Bernanke that brings the Fed in line with many of the world's other major central banks.
The U.S. central bank, in its first ever "longer-run goals and policy strategy" statement, said an inflation rate of 2 percent best aligned with its congressionally mandated goals of price stability and full employment.
However, it said it was not appropriate to adopt a fixed goal for employment because the level of unemployment that can be achieved without sparking inflation is not largely determined by monetary factors.
The inflation target is at the high end of what was traditionally seen as an informal target range of roughly 1.7 percent to 2 percent. It caps a long crusade by Bernanke to open a window onto what for years had been the Fed's purposefully opaque and secretive deliberations.
"Communicating this inflation goal clearly to the public helps keep longer-term inflation expectations firmly anchored, thereby fostering price stability and moderate long-term interest rates and enhancing the committee's ability to promote maximum employment in the face of significant economic disturbances," the Fed said.
Skeptics, particularly among congressional Democrats, have in the past worried that an explicit inflation target would relegate the full employment goal to the back burner.
But Bernanke, perhaps with one eye to Capitol Hill, was careful to stress that setting an inflation target did not mean the central bank would lose sight of the other side of its dual mandate.
"We are not absolutists," he said at a news conference. "If there is a need to let inflation return a little bit more slowly to target to get a better result on unemployment, then that is something that we would be willing to do."
The Fed would not make meeting its inflation target its top priority and consider a healthy job market a secondary goal, Bernanke said, as he dismissed the label of "inflation targeter."
"We are a dual-mandate central bank. We put equal weight on price stability and maximum employment," he said.
TIMELY MOVE
While Bernanke, the plainspoken successor of Alan Greenspan, has touted a numerical inflation goal as a cornerstone of central bank best practices for years, the move on Wednesday was timely because it could help quell nagging doubts that the Fed's unprecedented easy money policies are setting the stage for a nasty bout of inflation.
The U.S. economy strengthened toward the end of last year, with the unemployment rate dropping to a near three-year low of 8.5 percent. If the rebound falters, the inflation target could help pave the way to more bond buying.
"I think this is a dovish move showing the Fed is concerned about deflation," said Eric Stein, portfolio manager at Eaton Vance in Boston, who characterized the inflation target as "a big deal."
Since early 2009, Fed officials have provided their views on the longer-run inflation rate they deemed appropriate, projections that were widely seen as an informal target.
They provide similar long-run projections for unemployment that given an indication of how low a jobless rate officials think is sustainable without generating inflation.
Those figures have moved up a bit in fits and starts -- a suggestion that a growing number of Fed officials believe the 2007-2009 recession left lasting economic scars.
Fed officials on Wednesday held their longer-run inflation forecasts at 1.7 percent to 2 percent, and signaled comfort with the outlook for prices. Their favored core price gauge was up 1.7 percent in the 12 months through November.
They also kept their long-run employment projection steady at 5.2 percent to 6.0 percent, but that range had been 4.8 percent to 5 percent in early 2009.
The Fed will reaffirm and "make adjustments as appropriate" to the long-term goals statement each January, it said, leaving open the possibility it could adjust its new target.
The statement was released simultaneously with another first for the Fed: published charts of individual policymakers' projections for the appropriate path of the benchmark federal funds rate.
(Additional reporting by Ann Saphir, Karen Brettell and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Padraic Cassidy and Leslie Adler)
LONDON ? The governor of the Bank of England has joined calls from government and Parliament for banks and other big businesses to curb lavish executive pay.
Mervyn King also said Tuesday that there is scope for the bank to pour more billions into economic stimulus, a step some analysts believe could come as early as next month.
Speaking in Brighton, King said those who set executive pay need to accept that the market economy relies on a perception that rewards are distributed fairly.
"The legitimacy of a market economy will inevitably be challenged if rewards go disproportionately to a small elite, especially one which benefited from the support of taxpayers," King said.
Major British banks, both those that were bailed out and those which benefited from the implicit support of taxpayers, are now in the spotlight of public concern about high pay and the bonus culture.
British Business Secretary Vince Cable said Monday his government will be making proposals this year to give shareholders more clout to curb excesses.
"The tragedy of the financial crisis is that those who have suffered most have been those who bear no responsibility for it, and who, whether employees or businesses, accepted the disciplines of a market economy only to find that others were excused that discipline because they were 'too important to fail,'" King said, again pointing to the financial sector.
The High Pay Commission, an independent body, reported last year that executive pay in Britain's top 100 corporations had risen far faster than overall pay.
At oil company BP, for instance, the top executive was paid 63 times the company's average pay in 2009-2011. At Barclays bank the multiple was 75 times, as was bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group.
Since December 2009, the Bank of England has spent 275 billion pounds ($430 billion) to buy high-grade assets, including government and corporate bonds, a program known as quantitative easing.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, concerned about the lagging growth of the U.K. economy, authorized the latest injection of 75 billion pounds in October.
"With inflation falling back and wage growth subdued, there is scope for interest rates to remain low, and, if necessary, for further asset purchases, to prevent inflation falling below the 2 percent target," King said.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) released a new TV ad in several swing states on Tuesday morning that uses Barack Obama?s own words against him and aims to knock some of the presidential glitter off of tonight?s campaign-themed State of the Union speech.
?The president will use his address to campaign and continue to make the same failed promises we?ve seen for the past three years,? said a statement from Kirsten Kukowski, an RNC spokeswoman. But his speech also ?presents us with an opportunity to speak directly to voters in those key battleground states about what the state of our union really is,? she said.
The ad is being broadcast in the D.C. media marketplace, in two swing states ? Virginia and North Carolina ? and in Michigan, where Obama is slated to give an education policy speech Jan. 26.
?We?re going into Michigan to show voters how vulnerable this president is in what many would consider his own backyard,? said Kukowski.
The dark-toned and dramatically scored 30-second ad begins by highlighting Obama?s Feb. 2009 statement ? ?If I don?t have this done in four years, then there?s going to be a one-term proposition? ? and immediately contrasts it with his economic record.
Former President Bill Clinton is shown saying that ?things are not going in the right direction: They?re going in the wrong direction.? Obama gets the final cut, declaring on video that ?I don?t think they?re better off than they were four years ago.?
Watch the new RNC ad:
The ad?s reliance on Democrats? comments about Obama is likely to be a feature of the RNC?s 2012 media campaign, partly because the public finds inter-party accusations untrustworthy.
?Barack Obama has a lot of a explaining to do in tonight?s State of the Union Address,? said a statement from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
?The day after he delivers his State of the Union Address, Barack Obama will be jetting off to five states he wants to win to be reelected ? [but] the American people need a president who will focus on the single most important issue in the country: fixing our economy,? said his statement.
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SUNDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified three new genomic regions they believe are linked with breast cancer that may help explain why some women develop the disease.
All three newly identified areas "contain interesting genes that open up new avenues for biological and clinical research," said researcher Douglas Easton, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge in England.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with about 1 million new cases annually worldwide and more than 400,000 deaths a year.
Scientists conducting genome-wide association studies -- research that looks at the association between genetic factors and disease to pinpoint possible causes -- had already identified 22 breast cancer susceptibility loci. Locus is the physical location of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.
"The three [newly identified] loci take the number of common susceptibility loci from 22 to 25," said Easton.
However, the three new susceptibility loci might explain only about 0.7 percent of the familial risks of breast cancer, bringing the total contribution to about 9 percent, the researchers said.
Michael Melner, scientific program director for the American Cancer Society, said this current research adds some important new clues to existing evidence, but he agreed that the number of cases likely associated with these three variants is probably low.
"So the total impact in terms of patients would be fairly small," Melner said.
The study is published online Jan. 22 in Nature Genetics.
To find the new clues, Easton's team worked with genetic information on about 57,000 breast cancer patients and 58,000 healthy women obtained from two genome-wide association studies.
The investigators zeroed in on 72 different single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP -- pronounced "snip" -- is a change in which a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base. The human genome has millions of SNPs, some linked with disease, while others are normal variations.
The researchers focused on three SNPs -- on chromosomes 12p11, 12q24 and 21q21.
Easton's team found that the variant on the 12p11 chromosome is linked with both estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (which needs estrogen to grow) and estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. The other two variants are only linked with ER-positive cancers, they said.
One of the newly identified variants is in an area with a gene that has a role in the development of mammary glands and bones. Easton said it was already known that mammary gland development in puberty is an important period in terms of determining later cancer risk. "But these are the first susceptibility genes to be shown to be involved in this process," he said.
One of the other SNPs is in an area that can affect estrogen receptor signaling, the researchers found.
Melner, noting some of the research is "fine tuning" of other work, said in his view the new understanding of the signaling pathways and their genetic links is the most important finding.
"When you delineate a pathway, you bring up new potential targets for therapy," he said. "The more targets you have, you open up the potential for having multiple drugs and attacking a cancer more easily, without it becoming more resistant."
Overall, Melner added, the results underscore the complexity of the different mechanisms involved in breast cancer development.
More information
For more about the genetics of breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.
Biochip measures glucose in saliva, not bloodPublic release date: 23-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Richard Lewis Richard_Lewis@brown.edu 401-863-3766 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] For the 26 million Americans with diabetes, drawing blood is the most prevalent way to check glucose levels. It is invasive and at least minimally painful. Researchers at Brown University are working on a new sensor that can check blood sugar levels by measuring glucose concentrations in saliva instead.
The technique takes advantage of a convergence of nanotechnology and surface plasmonics, which explores the interaction of electrons and photons (light). The engineers at Brown etched thousands of plasmonic interferometers onto a fingernail-size biochip and measured the concentration of glucose molecules in water on the chip. Their results showed that the specially designed biochip could detect glucose levels similar to the levels found in human saliva. Glucose in human saliva is typically about 100 times less concentrated than in the blood.
"This is proof of concept that plasmonic interferometers can be used to detect molecules in low concentrations, using a footprint that is ten times smaller than a human hair," said Domenico Pacifici, assistant professor of engineering and lead author of the paper published in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The technique can be used to detect other chemicals or substances, from anthrax to biological compounds, Pacifici said, "and to detect them all at once, in parallel, using the same chip."
To create the sensor, the researchers carved a slit about 100 nanometers wide and etched two 200 nanometer-wide grooves on either side of the slit. The slit captures incoming photons and confines them. The grooves, meanwhile, scatter the incoming photons, which interact with the free electrons bounding around on the sensor's metal surface. Those free electron-photon interactions create a surface plasmon polariton, a special wave with a wavelength that is narrower than a photon in free space. These surface plasmon waves move along the sensor's surface until they encounter the photons in the slit, much like two ocean waves coming from different directions and colliding with each other. This "interference" between the two waves determines maxima and minima in the light intensity transmitted through the slit. The presence of an analyte (the chemical being measured) on the sensor surface generates a change in the relative phase difference between the two surface plasmon waves, which in turns causes a change in light intensity, measured by the researchers in real time.
"The slit is acting as a mixer for the three beams the incident light and the surface plasmon waves," Pacifici said.
The engineers learned they could vary the phase shift for an interferometer by changing the distance between the grooves and the slit, meaning they could tune the interference generated by the waves. The researchers could tune the thousands of interferometers to establish baselines, which could then be used to accurately measure concentrations of glucose in water as low as 0.36 milligrams per deciliter.
"It could be possible to use these biochips to carry out the screening of multiple biomarkers for individual patients, all at once and in parallel, with unprecedented sensitivity," Pacifici said.
The engineers next plan to build sensors tailored for glucose and for other substances to further test the devices. "The proposed approach will enable very high throughput detection of environmentally and biologically relevant analytes in an extremely compact design. We can do it with a sensitivity that rivals modern technologies," Pacifici said.
Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering, is a contributing author on the paper. Graduate students Jing Feng (engineering) and Vince Siu (biology), who designed the microfluidic channels and carried out the experiments, are listed as the first two authors on the paper. Other authors include Brown engineering graduate student Steve Rhieu and undergraduates Vihang Mehta, Alec Roelke.
###
The National Science Foundation and Brown (through a Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award) funded the research.
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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.
Biochip measures glucose in saliva, not bloodPublic release date: 23-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Richard Lewis Richard_Lewis@brown.edu 401-863-3766 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] For the 26 million Americans with diabetes, drawing blood is the most prevalent way to check glucose levels. It is invasive and at least minimally painful. Researchers at Brown University are working on a new sensor that can check blood sugar levels by measuring glucose concentrations in saliva instead.
The technique takes advantage of a convergence of nanotechnology and surface plasmonics, which explores the interaction of electrons and photons (light). The engineers at Brown etched thousands of plasmonic interferometers onto a fingernail-size biochip and measured the concentration of glucose molecules in water on the chip. Their results showed that the specially designed biochip could detect glucose levels similar to the levels found in human saliva. Glucose in human saliva is typically about 100 times less concentrated than in the blood.
"This is proof of concept that plasmonic interferometers can be used to detect molecules in low concentrations, using a footprint that is ten times smaller than a human hair," said Domenico Pacifici, assistant professor of engineering and lead author of the paper published in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The technique can be used to detect other chemicals or substances, from anthrax to biological compounds, Pacifici said, "and to detect them all at once, in parallel, using the same chip."
To create the sensor, the researchers carved a slit about 100 nanometers wide and etched two 200 nanometer-wide grooves on either side of the slit. The slit captures incoming photons and confines them. The grooves, meanwhile, scatter the incoming photons, which interact with the free electrons bounding around on the sensor's metal surface. Those free electron-photon interactions create a surface plasmon polariton, a special wave with a wavelength that is narrower than a photon in free space. These surface plasmon waves move along the sensor's surface until they encounter the photons in the slit, much like two ocean waves coming from different directions and colliding with each other. This "interference" between the two waves determines maxima and minima in the light intensity transmitted through the slit. The presence of an analyte (the chemical being measured) on the sensor surface generates a change in the relative phase difference between the two surface plasmon waves, which in turns causes a change in light intensity, measured by the researchers in real time.
"The slit is acting as a mixer for the three beams the incident light and the surface plasmon waves," Pacifici said.
The engineers learned they could vary the phase shift for an interferometer by changing the distance between the grooves and the slit, meaning they could tune the interference generated by the waves. The researchers could tune the thousands of interferometers to establish baselines, which could then be used to accurately measure concentrations of glucose in water as low as 0.36 milligrams per deciliter.
"It could be possible to use these biochips to carry out the screening of multiple biomarkers for individual patients, all at once and in parallel, with unprecedented sensitivity," Pacifici said.
The engineers next plan to build sensors tailored for glucose and for other substances to further test the devices. "The proposed approach will enable very high throughput detection of environmentally and biologically relevant analytes in an extremely compact design. We can do it with a sensitivity that rivals modern technologies," Pacifici said.
Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering, is a contributing author on the paper. Graduate students Jing Feng (engineering) and Vince Siu (biology), who designed the microfluidic channels and carried out the experiments, are listed as the first two authors on the paper. Other authors include Brown engineering graduate student Steve Rhieu and undergraduates Vihang Mehta, Alec Roelke.
###
The National Science Foundation and Brown (through a Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award) funded the research.
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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.
(Reuters) ? A judge in Southern California on Friday sentenced a former financial advisor to life in prison for strangling a wealthy biotech executive and attempting to steal $9 million from one of his investment accounts.
A San Diego Superior Court jury last November convicted Kent Keigwin, 61, of first-degree murder in the June 2010 death of 65-year-old, British-born retired biotech executive John Watson.
Keigwin, who was a financial advisor, strangled Watson at his apartment in the wealthy La Jolla beach enclave near San Diego, California, and subsequently transferred $8.9 million out of one of his accounts.
In handing down the sentence on Friday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederic Link said Keigwin would not be eligible for parole.
Watson, a millionaire who since his death has been praised for helping San Diego entrepreneurs win investments, was the former CEO and president of locally based biotechnology company Ionian Technologies Inc.
Keigwin, who was friends with Watson, used a Taser to jolt Watson with an electric shock at the front door of his apartment in La Jolla, prosecutor Sharla Evert said in her closing arguments in the case.
Keigwin then strangled Watson. His DNA was subsequently found under the victim's fingernails which suggested the two men had struggled against each other, Evert said.
Keigwin's defense attorney, Stacy Gulley, said earlier in the case that Watson died after an "all-out fight" with Keigwin and her client had no motive to kill him.
But the day after Watson's death, Keigwin transferred $8.9 million from one of the victim's investment accounts into a new account that he had opened in Watson's name, prosecutors said.
Police arrested Keigwin three days after the murder.
Aside from the crime of murder, Keigwin also was convicted of the special circumstances that the killing took place for financial gain and during a robbery. Jurors also found Keigwin guilty of using the personal identity of another, burglary, forgery and attempted grand theft.
When he died, Watson was a board member with investor group Tech Coast Angels, which funds and guides fledgling companies with high growth potential in Southern California. Watson first came to the United States from Britain as a Fullbright scholar at Indiana University.
Earlier this month, Tech Coast Angels said it had established the John G. Watson Foundation with a $1 million gift from his family to support entrepreneurs in the San Diego area.
The group described Watson as a shrewd investor who liked to hike and swim in the ocean.
(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Tim Gaynor)
Mysterious flotsam in Gulf of Mexico came from Deepwater Horizon rig, WHOI study findsPublic release date: 19-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: WHOI Media Relations media@whoi.edu 508-289-3340 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Tracking debris from damaged oil rigs can help forecast coastal impacts in the future
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, mysterious honeycomb material was found floating in the Gulf of Mexico and along coastal beaches. Using state-of-the-art chemical forensics and a bit of old-fashioned detective work, a research team led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) confirmed that the flotsam were pieces of material used to maintain buoyancy of the pipe bringing up oil from the seafloor.
The researchers also affirmed that tracking debris from damaged offshore oil rigs could help forecast coastal pollution impacts in future oil spills and guide emergency response effortsmuch the way the Coast Guard has studied the speed and direction of various floating debris to guide search and rescue missions. The findings were published Jan. 19 in Environmental Research Letters.
On May 5, 2010, 15 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oceanographer William Graham and marine technicians from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab were working from a boat about 32 miles south of Dauphin Island, Ala., when they saw a 6-mile-long, east-west line containing more than 50 pieces of white material interspersed with sargassum weed. The porous material was uniformly embedded with black spheres about a centimeter in diameter. No oil slick was in sight, but there was a halo of oil sheen around the honeycomb clumps.
Two days later, the researchers also collected similar samples about 25 miles south of Dauphin Island. Nobody knew what the material was, with some hypothesizing at first that it could be coral or other substance made by marine plants or animals. Graham sent samples to WHOI chemist Chris Reddy, whose lab confirmed that the material was not biological. But the material's source remained unconfirmed.
In January 2011, Reddy and WHOI researcher Catherine Carmichael, lead author of the new study, collected a piece of the same unknown material of Elmer's Beach, Grand Isle, La. In April, 2011, they found several large pieces, ranging from 3 to 10 feet, of the honeycomb debris on the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana.
Oil on all these samples was analyzed at WHOI using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography. The technique identifies the thousands of individual chemical compounds that comprise different oils from different reservoirs. The chemistry of the oil on the debris matched that of oil sampled directly from the broken pipe from the Macondo well above the Deepwater Horizon rig.
In addition, one piece of debris from the Chandeleur Islands retained a weathered red sticker that read "Cuming" with the numbers 75-1059 below it. Reddy found a company called Cuming Corporation in Avon, Mass., which manufactures syntactic foam flotation equipment for the oil and gas industry. He e-mailed photos of the specimen to the company, and within hours, a Cuming engineer confirmed from the serial number that the foam came from a buoyancy module from Deepwater Horizon.
"We realized that the foam and the oil were released into the environment at the same time," Reddy said. "So we had a unique tracer that was independent of the oil itself to chronicle how oil and debris drifted out from the spill site."
The scientists overlaid the locations where they found honeycomb debris on May 5 and 7 with daily forecasts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the trajectory of the spreading oil slick. NOAA used a model that incorporated currents and wind speeds, along with data from planes and satellites. On both days, the debris was about 6.2 miles ahead of the spreading slick.
The explanation, the scientists said, is the principle of leeway, a measure of how fast wind or waves push materials. The leeway for fresh oil is 3 to 3.3 percent, but the scientists suspected that "the protruding profile of the buoyant material" acted acting like a sail, allowing wind to drive it faster than and ahead of the floating oil.
In this case, the flotsam served as a harbinger for the oncoming slick, but because different materials can have different leeways, oil spill models may not accurately forecast where oiled debris will head. "Even a small deviation in leeway can, over time, results in significant differences in surface tracks because of typical wind fields," the scientists wrote.
The Coast Guard has a long history of calculating the leeway of various materials, from life jackets to bodies of various sizes and weights, to improve forecasts of where the materials would drift if a ship sank or a plane crashed into the sea. But calculating leeways has not been standard practice in oil spills.
"We never had solid data to make the case until this study," said Merv Fingas, who tracked oil spills for more than 38 years for Environment Canada, which is equivalent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"These results," the study's authors wrote, "provide insights into the fate of debris fields deriving from damaged marine materials and should be incorporated into emergency response efforts and forecasting of coastal impacts during future offshore oil spills."
###
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment.
[ | E-mail | 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.
Mysterious flotsam in Gulf of Mexico came from Deepwater Horizon rig, WHOI study findsPublic release date: 19-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: WHOI Media Relations media@whoi.edu 508-289-3340 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Tracking debris from damaged oil rigs can help forecast coastal impacts in the future
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, mysterious honeycomb material was found floating in the Gulf of Mexico and along coastal beaches. Using state-of-the-art chemical forensics and a bit of old-fashioned detective work, a research team led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) confirmed that the flotsam were pieces of material used to maintain buoyancy of the pipe bringing up oil from the seafloor.
The researchers also affirmed that tracking debris from damaged offshore oil rigs could help forecast coastal pollution impacts in future oil spills and guide emergency response effortsmuch the way the Coast Guard has studied the speed and direction of various floating debris to guide search and rescue missions. The findings were published Jan. 19 in Environmental Research Letters.
On May 5, 2010, 15 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oceanographer William Graham and marine technicians from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab were working from a boat about 32 miles south of Dauphin Island, Ala., when they saw a 6-mile-long, east-west line containing more than 50 pieces of white material interspersed with sargassum weed. The porous material was uniformly embedded with black spheres about a centimeter in diameter. No oil slick was in sight, but there was a halo of oil sheen around the honeycomb clumps.
Two days later, the researchers also collected similar samples about 25 miles south of Dauphin Island. Nobody knew what the material was, with some hypothesizing at first that it could be coral or other substance made by marine plants or animals. Graham sent samples to WHOI chemist Chris Reddy, whose lab confirmed that the material was not biological. But the material's source remained unconfirmed.
In January 2011, Reddy and WHOI researcher Catherine Carmichael, lead author of the new study, collected a piece of the same unknown material of Elmer's Beach, Grand Isle, La. In April, 2011, they found several large pieces, ranging from 3 to 10 feet, of the honeycomb debris on the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana.
Oil on all these samples was analyzed at WHOI using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography. The technique identifies the thousands of individual chemical compounds that comprise different oils from different reservoirs. The chemistry of the oil on the debris matched that of oil sampled directly from the broken pipe from the Macondo well above the Deepwater Horizon rig.
In addition, one piece of debris from the Chandeleur Islands retained a weathered red sticker that read "Cuming" with the numbers 75-1059 below it. Reddy found a company called Cuming Corporation in Avon, Mass., which manufactures syntactic foam flotation equipment for the oil and gas industry. He e-mailed photos of the specimen to the company, and within hours, a Cuming engineer confirmed from the serial number that the foam came from a buoyancy module from Deepwater Horizon.
"We realized that the foam and the oil were released into the environment at the same time," Reddy said. "So we had a unique tracer that was independent of the oil itself to chronicle how oil and debris drifted out from the spill site."
The scientists overlaid the locations where they found honeycomb debris on May 5 and 7 with daily forecasts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the trajectory of the spreading oil slick. NOAA used a model that incorporated currents and wind speeds, along with data from planes and satellites. On both days, the debris was about 6.2 miles ahead of the spreading slick.
The explanation, the scientists said, is the principle of leeway, a measure of how fast wind or waves push materials. The leeway for fresh oil is 3 to 3.3 percent, but the scientists suspected that "the protruding profile of the buoyant material" acted acting like a sail, allowing wind to drive it faster than and ahead of the floating oil.
In this case, the flotsam served as a harbinger for the oncoming slick, but because different materials can have different leeways, oil spill models may not accurately forecast where oiled debris will head. "Even a small deviation in leeway can, over time, results in significant differences in surface tracks because of typical wind fields," the scientists wrote.
The Coast Guard has a long history of calculating the leeway of various materials, from life jackets to bodies of various sizes and weights, to improve forecasts of where the materials would drift if a ship sank or a plane crashed into the sea. But calculating leeways has not been standard practice in oil spills.
"We never had solid data to make the case until this study," said Merv Fingas, who tracked oil spills for more than 38 years for Environment Canada, which is equivalent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"These results," the study's authors wrote, "provide insights into the fate of debris fields deriving from damaged marine materials and should be incorporated into emergency response efforts and forecasting of coastal impacts during future offshore oil spills."
###
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment.
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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.
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