Mozilla launches Firefox Live to promote browser

Mozilla has launched a new marketing campaign to promote Firefox: adopting red pandas and putting them on live webcams. The company wants to underline the fact that the red panda is the mascot for its open source browser via a new section on its site called Firefox Live.

Firefox Live features six webcams, each of which are positioned on a red panda. There are three cubs (360 cute, Frolic, and Snuggle), their parents (Snooze and Gnaw), and their aunt (Chillin). All of them live at the Knoxville Zoo and are under sponsorship from Mozilla.

The website has an interesting marketing ploy: after a certain number of Firefox downloads, the baby red pandas get a new treat. Separately, a Cub Naming Contest lets you submit a name for the little furry animals. Most importantly, you can help support red pandas in Nepal and India by adopting one via a link on the site.

It's clear that Mozilla is trying to think of new ways to promote its browser ahead of the launch of Firefox 4. The company has been struggling recently as Firefox steadily loses share to Google Chrome.

"We're streaming cuteness," reads a message on the website. "We're dedicated to doing good. We're out to make the web a better place. Thank you for supporting Mozilla Firefox."

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Video - Going with the Flow

Going with the Flow

Using stimulated Raman spectroscopy, researchers tuned lasers to the frequency of proteins in red blood cells. They trained the lasers on blood vessels in the ear of a mouse. A detector captured the resulting protein signals, translating them into images, which researchers sequenced together to create a video of red blood cells flowing through the capillaries of a mouse. The movie shows a Y-shaped junction of blood capillaries with individual red blood cells.

12.06.2010
Video by Sunney Xie/Harvard University - Read the Article

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In Interview, Bernanke Backs Tax Code Shift

The statements, in an interview with ?60 Minutes? on CBS, were a rare foray outside the strict boundaries of the Fed?s mandate, to which Mr. Bernanke has typically confined his remarks.

In the interview, which was taped last week during a visit to the Ohio State University, Mr. Bernanke was unusually blunt in defending the Fed?s decision last month to inject $600 billion into the banking system to jolt the flagging recovery.

?This fear of inflation, I think, is way overstated,? Mr. Bernanke said. ?We?ve looked at it very, very carefully. We?ve analyzed it every which way.?

On fiscal policy, a topic he has largely avoided, Mr. Bernanke repeated his point that the government should avoid an immediate contraction that could jeopardize the fragile recovery, while at the same time starting to address ?the long-term structural budget deficit.?

But he went slightly further when asked how Congress might help the economy grow.

?The tax code is very inefficient ? both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code,? Mr. Bernanke said. ?By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.?

That statement seemed to be an endorsement of one proposal from the fiscal commission appointed by President Obama. Among the ideas it put forward last week was reducing personal income tax rates but eliminating a number of popular deductions.

When asked about rising inequality in the United States, Mr. Bernanke offered a response that was likely to be embraced by liberals.

?It?s a very bad development,? he said. ?It?s creating two societies. And it?s based very much, I think, on educational differences. The unemployment rate we?ve been talking about. If you?re a college graduate, unemployment is 5 percent. If you?re a high school graduate, it?s 10 percent or more. It?s a very big difference.?

Mr. Bernanke added: ?It leads to an unequal society, and a society which doesn?t have the cohesion that we?d like to see.?

During the interview, Mr. Bernanke reiterated his view that a double-dip recession was unlikely, but added, ?We?re not very far from the level where the economy is not self-sustaining.?

The chairman also left open the option of going beyond the $600 billion of Treasury securities the Fed plans to buy through June 2011.

?It?s certainly possible,? Mr. Bernanke said, adding: ?It depends on the efficacy of the program. It depends on inflation. And finally, it depends on how the economy looks.?

Mr. Bernanke offered a retort to critics, saying, ?We?re not printing money. The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.?

Mr. Bernanke?s remarks suggested that the Fed was highly unlikely to change course when it meets on Dec. 14 for the final time this year.

The Fed has made it clear that its implicit long-run target for inflation is around 2 percent or slightly less, and Mr. Bernanke said that ?we?ve been very, very clear that we will not allow inflation to rise above? that level.

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Nvidia launches 500-series mobile graphics with rebadged GT 435M

Having shipped its first GeForce GTX 500 series desktop graphics card, Nvidia decided it'd be a good time to extend the name to its mobile product line. The company has kicked off its GeForce 500M family with a "new" mid-range chip, the GT 540M. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot to get excited about as Nvidia continues its ongoing practice of rebadging chips.

The latest entry features almost exactly the same specifications as the GeForce GT 435M, including the same 40nm fabrication, 96 CUDA cores, up to 1.5GB of memory with a 128-bit memory bus, and support for DirectX 11. However, thanks to the "maturation of the production process," Nvidia has raised the graphics, processor and memory clocks by a marginal degree.


While the GeForce GT 435M has a core, shader and memory speed of 650MHz, 1,300MHz, and 800MHz, the GT 540M is set at 672MHz, 1,344MHz, and 900Mhz. Despite the 22MHz, 44MHz, and 100MHz increase, power levels remain the same. The updated part is already shipping to Chinese customers in an Acer notebook with global availability expected next month.

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The Caucus: Deal to Extend Bush Tax Cuts Would Reduce Payroll Levy

President Obama closed in on a deal with Congressional Republicans on Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years as part of a package that would extend jobless aid for long-term unemployed, cut payroll taxes for all workers for a year and take other steps to bolster the economy, an administration official said.

In announcing the preliminary deal, Mr. Obama said Democrats were holding firm against what he portrayed as Republican attempts to only grant tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

?Make no mistake, allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family and that could cost our economy well over a million jobs,? Mr. Obama said at the White House.

The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years. The deal includes reducing the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on employees by two percentage points for a year, putting more money in the paychecks of workers. That tax cut would replace the central tax break for middle and low-income Americans included in last year?s economic stimulus measure, White House officials said.

It also includes continuation of a college-tuition tax credit for some families, an expansion of the earned income tax credit and a provision to allow businesses to write off the cost of certain equipment purchases.

The deal, which is not yet finalized, would include a 13-month extension of jobless aid for the long-term unemployed. Benefits have already started to run out for some people, and as many as 7 million people would potentially lose assistance within the next year, administration officials said.

Administration officials sought to cast the deal in a positive light, saying many of the new provisions would do more to accelerate the economic recovery than the tax cuts at high income levels.

But Congressional Democrats have expressed increasing anger that the payroll tax cut and the jobless aide, which Mr. Obama demanded in exchange for continuing the Bush-era tax rates for the highest-income Americans, were not enough in return for such a big concession.

The payroll tax cut would put about $120 billion back in the pockets of workers and the unemployment benefits would cost about $60 billion, officials said. Continuing the lowered tax rates for the highest-earners, by contrast, would cost the government $700 billion in lost revenue over the next 10 years, according to budget analysts.

The White House was also said to have agreed to Republican demands on the estate tax that would result in an exemption of $5 million per person and a maximum rate of 35 percent. Some Democratic aides said that concession alone was reason enough for Democratic lawmakers to oppose the deal when it comes up for votes in the House and Senate.

Some Democrats expressed wariness about the emerging deal. But it was clear that Republicans were happier with the results.

?Nothing has been finalized yet,? Senator John Barasso, Republican of Wyoming said in a television interview. Still he said, ?I am encouraging Democrats to get on board.? He added, ?They good news is it doesn?t raise taxes on anyone in this country.?

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For Federal Employees, a Feeling of Being Targets in the Budget Wars

WASHINGTON ? Iyauta Moore may be many things ? a single mother raised by a single mother in the South Bronx, a 34-year-old woman with a master?s degree in public administration from American University, a top-level government employee who makes a little over $100,000 a year ? but she bristles at the notion that she is just another overpaid, underworked, cosseted bureaucrat.

?What I do here involves creating something that doesn?t exist,? she said of her job at the Department of Education, where she is establishing a group to help oversee all of the department?s grants. ?That?s not pushing paper.?

Ms. Moore, who is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, added: ?We?re out and we?re making a difference in the community. And I don?t really think you can put a dollar figure on that.?

But as politicians intent on cutting the federal budget try to do just that, career government employees are feeling besieged.

During the midterm elections, the federal work force became a target for Republicans in particular. In a speech in Cleveland, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the top Republican in the House, called it ?nonsense? that ?taxpayers are subsidizing the fattened salaries and pensions of federal bureaucrats.? And last week, President Obama proposed a two-year freeze on the salaries of federal employees.

?I think federal employees are definitely getting a bad rap and definitely have become political punching bags,? said William R. Dougan, the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 blue- and white-collar government workers. ?It?s hard for people, until they actually experience not having some of the services that the government provides, to understand what the government does.?

Mathew Kolodzie, 31, is a Department of Defense firefighter at the Watervliet Arsenal near Albany. He works two days on, followed by three days off, and is required to work a minimum of 144 hours over a two-week pay period. This year, he spent Thanksgiving at the firehouse.

He is paid $48,113 a year, which he says is enough for him and his family to get by; he and his wife have one daughter and ?one on the way.? But, he said, ?This pay freeze isn?t the greatest timing, especially around Christmas.?

Carl Houtman, 49, is a research chemical engineer for the Forest Service in Madison, Wis. As an upper-level government employee, he makes around $100,000 a year, but says that while his job is equivalent to that of a university professor, ?a typical professor at my level is making $150,000 a year, and in private companies, I would be able to double by salary.?

Still, he likes the freedom his government job affords ? the flexible schedule that allows him to attend his children?s concerts and teach a tai chi class, the ability to ?tell the truth, not filtered by whether or not my company is going to die, or whether or not I?m going to get tenure.? He considers his job secure.

Mr. Houtman methodically logs in 40 hours per week on a time sheet, although, he says, he often works closer to 50.

Critics point out that the number of federal employees making over $150,000 has doubled under Mr. Obama, but that fact is somewhat misleading. In 2008, thousands of federal employees were held under a $149,000 pay cap, and in 2009 when Congress raised that by 2.9 percent, it bumped a significant number of salaries just over $150,000.

And the government has worried for years that a wave of retirements is about to hit, possibly costing dearly in talent, experience and institutional memory.

The overall executive branch civilian work force, excluding the Postal Service, stood at 2,094,000 in 2009, according to Office of Personnel Management data ? roughly where it was in the 1970s at the end of the Nixon administration. It grew under President Ronald Reagan, declined throughout the administrations of the first President Bush and Bill Clinton, and now stands roughly between the numbers for the Reagan and Clinton years.

Government jobs can pay well, but comparisons with the private sector are complex.

?At the top, the government is not competitive at all; it pays much less,? said John M. Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group. ?At the start of one?s career, it tends to pay below. In the middle, sometimes it?s about right. And for blue-collar and clerical jobs, the government is paying at market or above.?

Some say there are fewer performance incentives in government employment.

?Once you?re past your probationary year, there?s basically no reward for performance,? said James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization.

And indeed, some federal workers say they are happy with the status quo.

Lance Hamann, 40, works as a purchasing agent for the Department of Agriculture at a vocational jobs center in Puxico, Mo. His salary is a bit more than $40,000. He is the president of Local 1840 of the federal employees federation.

?To me, there?s a rhyme and reason to all the red tape the government does have,? he said, ?so I try my best to be patient with the red tape, knowing that?s just how the government runs.?

He says he is happy where he is professionally, with a decent paying job in the town where he grew up.

?I don?t necessarily want to move up the ladder, per se, and accept the additional responsibilities,? he said, ?even though that may come with additional pay.?

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Spenders Become Savers in Race for Key House Post

?Uncle Needs a Diet,? declares the package assembled by Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, one of three candidates in the race for one of the most powerful, and now paradoxical, jobs in government: leading the House Appropriations Committee in the new Congress as the Republican leadership tries to transform the panel from a fountain of federal spending into ground zero for budget cutting.

Selecting a chairman ? a party vote is expected Tuesday ? is the first step in perhaps the most audacious aspect of the plan by Representative John A. Boehner, the incoming Republican speaker, to alter the way the House works. Like Mr. Lewis, the other two leading candidates, Representatives Harold Rogers of Kentucky and Jack Kingston of Georgia, are campaigning to convince their party?s leadership that they can cast aside their own histories as earmarkers and pork-allocators and lead a shift in focus from how to spend it to how to save it.

To make the effort more than a slogan will mean upending one of the most entrenched cultures in Washington, a bipartisan tradition of directing money to favored causes with an eye as much to political gain as to policy outcome. Under both parties, the committee has long been a power unto itself, a secretive realm where subcommittee chairmen hold sway over Cabinet secretaries and generals and funding can almost magically materialize or disappear for little-scrutinized local projects even as national priorities are set or dismissed.

Leading the committee toward a belt-tightening mandate would also mean taking on an entire industry that has been built up around the federal trough, a complex of lobbyists, consultants and corporations who that feeds off the competition for dollars and with some regularity produces scandals ? and provides a substantial chunk of the campaign contributions that fuel the American political system.

?It has been a favor factory for years, and now it is going to become a slaughterhouse,? said Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and longtime antagonist of the Appropriations Committee who is in line to be one of several antispending conservatives on the panel. ?It is going to get ugly.?

All the candidates for chairman have more than 15 years on the committee and all have hungrily sought earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, in the last fiscal year, Mr. Lewis won 62 earmarks worth $97.6 million, followed by Mr. Rogers with 59 costing $93.4 million, and Mr. Kingston 40 worth $66.8 million.

Mr. Lewis was chairman of the committee before Democrats took control of the House in 2006 and would need a special exemption to be chairman again because of party-imposed term limits. In campaigning for the job, he has stressed his past efforts to push spending cuts. Mr. Rogers has emphasized his willingness to confront the executive branch on spending and his party fund-raising. Mr. Kingston has the backing of some outside fiscal watchdogs and pledges a new openness on the panel.

The team of Republican leaders planning to take over the House on Jan. 5 is exploring a variety of changes intended to break the committee?s spending mindset, starting with the new majority?s promise to slice $100 billion from President Obama?s budget request for the current fiscal year.

The three longtime committee members who aspire to head the panel have clearly gotten the message.

Like Mr. Lewis, his two rivals for the chairmanship – Mr. Rogers Mr. Kingston – are also committee members who have promised to devote themselves to paring spending, though all have funneled money to scores of projects through earmarks in past bills. The effort to reshape the committee promises to be a stern test of Republicans? rededication to fiscal sobriety after falling off the wagon during the dozen years, through 2006, that their party controlled the House, when government spending rose at rapid rates.

?They have promised things that they have neither delivered in the past nor, in my opinion, are going to be able to deliver on in the future,? said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat and a veteran of the Appropriations Committee himself.

To succeed and satisfy the conservative Tea Party-style voters that propelled them to power, Republicans will have to quickly make significant cuts in government programs and somehow find a way to enact those cuts into law in cooperation with a Democratically controlled Senate and a Democratic president.

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Copy and paste for Windows Phone 7 captured on video: it looks clunky [TNW Microsoft]

As you recall, copy and paste is not currently supported by Windows Phone 7, something that has been the target of much ridicule. As we recently reported, the feature is on the way.

And now we have video. Or we almost do, the video below may not work as YouTube is still processing it. If that is the case, go here to watch a choppy version. The OS build demonstrated is 7.07338.0, which you almost certainly do not have (unless you are a developer), so don?t try to do this at home.

What do we think? It looks like it is difficult to use, just like copy and paste for iOS, something that we have never been completely content with. Watch the video, and tell us in the comments what you think. Oh, this is coming out in ?early 2011? along with an undisclosed set of other features.

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Video - Molecular Moisturizing

Molecular Moisturizing

Researchers improved on a technique called stimulated Raman spectroscopy to capture real-time images in the skin of living mice. To observe the absorption of trans-retinol, a common skin-care product, into a mouse?s skin, the team tuned two lasers to the frequency of a lipid in the drug and trained the lasers on the application site, yielding images in real time of the drug traveling down a hair shaft into the sebaceous gland.

12.06.2010
Video by Sunney Xie/Harvard University - Read the Article

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Forecasting Flu Pandemics Hinges on Insights into the Virus

Influenza is a crafty opponent. Just when researchers think they might know where it's headed next, it mutates. New strains form constantly, allowing the virus to evade detection by the human immune system, and these new strains can turn into pandemics with little to no warning. In 1918, the H1N1 subtype caused the most serious pandemic to date, killing 50 million people worldwide. That disaster was followed by the H2N2 pandemic in 1957, the H3N2 in 1968, and the resurgence last year of H1N1, now also known as swine flu.

To predict what the next dangerous strain will look like, researchers are trying to develop more sophisticated models of the biology and evolution of the virus. "If I was to make a prediction, I'd say that the H2 strain of the virus could cause the next pandemic," says Klaus Stohr, director of influenza vaccine franchises at Novartis and former head of the World Health Organization's global influenza program. But he admits that predictions like his are just educated guesses. Above all, he says, "we need better models that could genetically predict which subtype will cause the next pandemic?that would be a real breakthrough. That, in my view, could be a Nobel Prize-winning discovery."

In contrast to pandemic flu, seasonal flu occurs with predictable regularity and is largely controllable. Six months before the beginning of the flu season in each hemisphere, the World Health Organization examines circulating strains from the previous year and determines which six are mostly likely to be a problem. Those are the strains that appear in the flu vaccines distributed to physicians' offices each year, and they're usually spot on. But when the virus genome mutates in ways scientists don't anticipate?when it picks up a gene from one of the strains that infect birds or pigs, or when it manages to hop straight from livestock to humans?the result is a type of influenza against which humans have limited immunity. That has the potential to attack hard and spread fast.

A severe flu pandemic could result in as much as a 5.5 percent drop in the U.S. gross domestic product, amounting to a $683 billion loss to the country's economy, according to a report by the Trust for America's Health. And despite the unceasing work of labs around the world?the World Health Organization has more than 100 laboratories participating in its influenza network?there is not yet much that researchers or public health officials can do to predict a pandemic, let alone prevent one. "People are studying the virus and its genome all the time and want to get to those answers," says Martin Meltzer, a health economist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We don't know enough about how the genome of the flu virus interacts with the human genome that it infects."

While developing a model that predicts what the next pandemic virus will look like is proving difficult, "there's been more progress in predicting how it will spread once it has started circulating in the human population," says Cecile Viboud, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health. "Modeling suggested very early on, for pandemic influenza, that it was not useful to close borders and air traffic, because by the time you detected the virus somewhere it had already spread to other places." Modeling has also proved important for understanding who should be vaccinated, against both seasonal and pandemic strains. "If you vaccinate school kids, you reduce disease transmission in the entire community," Viboud says.

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