According to a research from CCMI, a majority of Fortune 1000 companies are pursuing alternatives to control the exorbitant wireless bills incurred when employees do business internationally.
Here?s what the report, commissioned by Truphone, reveals:
40% of companies are forbidding or curtailing business usage of wireless devices while abroad to help manage costs.
24% said that they have lost business as a result of roaming costs.
Nearly 37% of companies surveyed spend $1,000 or more per month per user on average wireless roaming costs for their international travelers, with stories of single monthly bill charges ranging from $10,000 to $200,000.
In addition, the study also reveals other key findings related to roaming expenditures, alternatives corporations are using to offset roaming costs, travel trends and more? You can get the full report from here, and while at Truphone?s website ? download their VoIP app to save some cash yourself. It [app] is available for all popular platforms, including the iOS and Android?
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do.
In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application.
Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
BRUSSELS ? With another recession looming, European leaders on Monday met in Brussels to discuss ways to stimulate growth and create badly needed jobs, even as they drew up tighter spending limits to avoid a repeat of the crippling debt crisis.
Europe's debt crisis has put the continent and its leaders in an almost impossible situation. While they have to slash their deficits to reassure investors reluctant to lend to them, the debt crisis has also hammered the so-called "real economy," sending unemployment soaring. Many think that only government spending can restart growth.
While the 27 EU leaders meeting in Brussels will focus on walking the fine line between reining in spending and stimulating growth, the elephant in room is Greece.
Greece and its bondholders have come closer to a deal to significantly reduce the country's debt and pave the way for it to receive a much-needed euro130 billion ($170 billion) bailout.
Negotiators for Greece's private creditors said Saturday that a debt-reduction deal could become final within the next week. If the agreement works as planned, it could help Greece avoid a catastrophic default, which would be a blow to Europe's already weak financial system.
But European officials are afraid that even that deal may not be enough to fix Greece's finances, with some blaming Athens for dithering in its austerity promises.
German officials over the weekend proposed that Athens temporarily cede control over tax and spending decisions to a powerful eurozone budget commissioner before it can secure further bailouts.
The idea proved immediately controversial ? both the European Commission and the Greek government refuted it ? to the point that German Chancellor Angela Merkel pulled back on the idea when she arrived in Brussels.
She said Europe had to support Greece in implementing promised austerity and reform measures, "but all that will only work if Greece and all other states discuss this together."
Luxembourg Prime Minister, and head of the group of eurozone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters as he entered the summit that Greece couldn't be singled out.
"I'm strongly against the idea of imposing the debt commissioner only to Greece, that's just not acceptable" neither for Greece nor the rest of Europe, Juncker said.
The negotiations in Greece are crucial because it is clear that Athens will never be able to pay off all of its debts, especially as austerity measures take their toll on its anemic economy. Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, cautioned against punishing Greece too severely.
"Greece needs an economic relaunch today and not in 2016," he told reporters on the sidelines of the summit. "So why not put together a stimulus package today instead of discussing another time a reduction in spending in a country that's in an economic depression?
He said that there are European funds for that kind of stimulus, but unlocking them has always posed a challenge.
The European Commission has proposed to summit leaders that euro82 billion in existing development funds be redirected toward countries in dire need of help to fix their labor markets.
Greece is not alone in facing slow growth and high unemployment. In Spain, for example, unemployment has soared to nearly 23 percent and closed in on 50 percent for those under age 25, leaving more than 5 million people ? or almost one out of every four ? out of work as the country slides toward recession.
Even countries in the so-called European "core" ? which are generally better off ? are suffering. The French government was forced Monday to revise down its growth forecast for the year from 1 percent to just 0.5 percent.
In fact, many now fear that Europe is on the verge of another recession, and leaders gathering Brussels said that spurring growth would be the focus of their talks Monday.
A draft of the summit conclusions, obtained by The Associated Press, proposes reducing barriers to do business across the EU's 27 states and giving better training to young people, who are particularly hard-hit by unemployment.
But it does not contain any new financial stimulus to boost growth, even though turning around Europe's economy would likely require more stimulus from governments, which are currently under pressure to cut ? rather than increase ? spending.
"We have to have balanced budgets and at the same time focus on growth and jobs," said Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of European Council. "It is possible to both at the same time and it is important to understand that these are two sides of the same coin."
The 27 heads of state and government got a taste of the popular frustration with austerity and high unemployment on their way to Monday's summit in a city paralyzed by strikes. Leaders had to fly into the military airport of Beauvechain 20 miles (30 kilometers) outside of Brussels after the city's main airport was shutdown by a 24-hour strike.
Belgium's three main unions joined forces in the walkout to protest national budgetary measures that have in part been imposed on the country by the EU. If the country hadn't met cost-cutting targets, financial sanctions would have been imposed.
Monday's strike has been mirrored in many other member states. Overall, 23 million people are jobless across the EU, 10 percent of the active population.
"Europe has to offer jobs, social protection and perspective for the future. Otherwise it risks losing the support of its citizens," said the strike manifesto of the ACV union.
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Associated Press writers Don Melvin, Robert Wielaard and Raf Casert contributed to this story.
Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak appears in the Oslo courthouse, Oslo, Norway Monday Jan. 30, 2012. Two men accused of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were found guilty Monday of terror charges in Norway, the first convictions under the country's anti-terror laws. The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Berit Roald) NORWAY OUT
Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak appears in the Oslo courthouse, Oslo, Norway Monday Jan. 30, 2012. Two men accused of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were found guilty Monday of terror charges in Norway, the first convictions under the country's anti-terror laws. The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Berit Roald) NORWAY OUT
Judge Oddmund Svarteberg prepares to read the sentences of two men accused of planning an attack in the Oslo courthouse, Oslo, Norway Monday Jan. 30, 2012. Two men accused of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were found guilty Monday of terror charges in Norway, the first convictions under the country's anti-terror laws. The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Berit Roald) NORWAY OUT
Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak appears in the Oslo courthouse, Oslo, Norway Monday Jan. 30, 2012. Two men accused of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad were found guilty Monday of terror charges in Norway, the first convictions under the country's anti-terror laws. The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Berit Roald) NORWAY OUT
OSLO, Norway (AP) ? Two men were found guilty Monday of involvement in an al-Qaida plot to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, the first convictions under Norway's anti-terror laws.
A third defendant was acquitted of terror charges but convicted of helping the others acquire explosives.
Investigators say the plot was linked to the same al-Qaida planners behind thwarted attacks against the New York subway system and a shopping mall in Manchester, England, in 2009.
The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud, to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years.
Judge Oddmund Svarteberg said the court found that Davud, a Chinese Muslim, "planned the attack together with al-Qaida." Bujak was deeply involved in the preparations, but it couldn't be proved that he was aware of Davud's contacts with al-Qaida, the judge said.
The third defendant, David Jakobsen, who assisted police in the investigation, was convicted on an explosives charge and sentenced to four months in prison ? time he's already served in pretrial detention.
Defense lawyers for the three told the court they would study the verdict before deciding whether to appeal.
Davud smiled and waved to photographers as he left the court. His defense lawyer, Carl Konow Rieber-Mohn, told The Associated Press later Monday that he would advise his client to appeal.
The case was Norway's most high-profile terror investigation until last July, when a right-wing extremist killed 77 people in a bomb and shooting massacre.
The three men, who were arrested in July 2010, made some admissions but pleaded innocent to terror conspiracy charges and rejected any links to al-Qaida.
During the trial Davud denied he was taking orders from al-Qaida, saying he was planning a solo raid against the Chinese Embassy in Oslo. He said he wanted revenge for Beijing's oppression of Uighurs, a Muslim minority in western China.
Davud, who moved to Norway in 1999 and later became a Norwegian citizen, also said his co-defendants helped him acquire bomb-making ingredients but didn't know he was planning an attack.
Prosecutors said the Norwegian cell first wanted to attack Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, whose 12 cartoons of Muhammad sparked furious protests in Muslim countries in 2006, and then changed plans to seek to murder one of the cartoonists instead.
Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd, said the paper and the cartoonist were indeed the targets, but described the plans as "just talk."
Prosecutors had to prove the defendants worked together in a conspiracy, because a single individual plotting an attack is not covered under Norway's anti-terror laws.
"There is no doubt that Davud took the initiative to prepare the terror act and that he was the ring leader," the judge said as he delivered the verdict.
He said Davud planned to carry out the attack himself by placing a bomb outside Jyllands-Posten's offices in Aarhus, in western Denmark.
The men had been under surveillance for more than a year when authorities moved to arrest them. Norwegian investigators, who worked with their U.S. counterparts, said the defendants were building a bomb in a basement laboratory in Oslo.
Jakobsen, an Uzbek national who changed his name after moving to Norway, provided some of the chemicals for the bomb, but claims he did not know they were meant for explosives. Jakobsen contacted police and served as an informant, but still faced charges for his involvement before that.
An Associated Press investigation in 2010 showed that authorities learned early on about the alleged cell by intercepting emails from an al-Qaida operative in Pakistan and ? thanks to those early warnings ? were able to secretly replace a key bomb-making ingredient with a harmless liquid when Jakobsen ordered it at an Oslo pharmacy.
The judge said it had been proven that Davud had contacts with al-Qaida in Pakistan, and that his notebook contained references to Saleh al-Somali, al-Qaida's chief of external operations, who officials believe helped organize the New York, Manchester and Norway plots. He was killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan in 2009.
During the trial, prosecutors presented testimony obtained in the U.S. in April from three American al-Qaida recruits turned government witnesses.
ATHENS, Greece ? Greece and its private investors are close to a deal that will significantly reduce the country's debt and pave the way for it to receive a much-needed euro130 billion bailout.
Negotiators for the investors announced the tentative agreement Saturday and said it could become final next week.
Under the agreement, the investors would take a hit of more than 60 percent on the euro206 billion of Greek debt they own.
Here's how it would work: private investors would receive new bonds whose face value is half of the existing bonds. The new bonds would have a longer maturity and pay an average interest rate of slightly less than 4 percent (compared with an estimated 5 percent on the existing bonds).
Without the deal, which would reduce Greece's debt load by at least euro120 billion, the private investors' bonds would likely become worthless. Many of these investors also hold debt from other eurozone countries, which could also lose value in the event of a Greek default.
The agreement taking shape is a key step before Greece can get a second, euro130 billion bailout from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund, although there are other issues involved before Greece can get that aid. This would be Greece's second bailout. The EU and the IMF signed off on a euro110 billion aid package for Greece in May 2010, most of which has already been disbursed.
Greece faces a euro14.5 billion bond repayment on March 20, which it cannot afford without additional help.
Private investors hold roughly two-thirds of Greece's debt, which has reached an unsustainable level ? nearly 200 percent of the country's economic output. By restructuring the debt held by private investors, Greece and its EU partners are hoping to bring that ratio closer to 120 percent by the end of this decade.
In return for the first bailout, Greece's public creditors ? the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank ? have unprecedented powers over Greek spending. However, austerity alone will not fix Greece's problem. The country must also find ways boost its economic output, which at the moment is shrinking.
If no debt-exchange deal is reached with private creditors and Greece is forced to default, it would very likely spook Europe's ? and possibly the world's ? financial markets. It could even lead Greece to withdraw from the euro.
The banks, insurance companies and other private holders of Greek bonds are being represented by Charles Dallara, managing director of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance, and Jean Lemierre, senior adviser to the chairman of the French bank BNP Paribas.
The main creditor negotiators will leave Greece on Sunday and will remain in close consultation with Greek and other authorities.
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Elena Becatoros in Athens and Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels contributed.
When SUMO grips STAT5, a protein that activates genes, it blocks the healthy embryonic development of immune B cells and T cells unless its nemesis breaks the hold, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports today in Molecular Cell.
"This research extends the activity of SUMO and the Sentrin/SUMO-specific protease 1 (SENP1) to the field of immunology, in particular the early lymphoid development of T and B cells," said the study's senior author, Edward T. H. Yeh, M.D., professor and chair of MD Anderson's Department of Cardiology.
SUMO proteins, also known as the small ubiquitin-like modifiers or Sentrin, attach to other proteins in cells to modify their function or to move them within a cell. SENP1 is one of a family of six proteins that snips SUMO off of SUMO-modified proteins. SUMOylation (SUMO modification) of proteins has been implicated in development of cancer, heart and neurodegenerative diseases, among others.
The team first analyzed the role of SENP1 in the development of lymphoids in mice and found it is heavily expressed in precursor cells, the early stages of B and T cell development.
Working with genetically modified mice they developed that lack SENP1 gene expression, Yeh and colleagues found the mouse embryos had severe defects in their T and B cells, white blood cell lymphocytes that identify and fight infection.
SUMO pins STAT5 in the nucleus
Subsequent experiments led them to STAT5, a transcription factor known to play critical roles in the development and function of immune cells. Transcription factors work in the cell nucleus, activating gene expression by connecting to a gene's promoter region.
"STAT5 works in a cycle, moving from the cytosol of a cell into the nucleus to activate genes and then back out to the cytosol," Yeh said. "We found that when STAT5 is SUMOylated in the nucleus it gets trapped there when there's no SENP1 to remove SUMO."
The team found that SUMO muscles in on two other signaling events that govern STAT5 activity - phosphorylation and acetylation.
SUMO inhibits STAT5 signaling
STAT5 is activated in the cell cytosol when the JAK tyrosine kinase attaches a phosphate group at a specific site on the STAT5 protein. This transformed STAT5 crosses the nuclear membrane into the nucleus to transcribe genes.
The team found that SUMO attaches to STAT5 close to its phosphorylation site and that cells lacking SENP1 have increased SUMOylation and decreased phosphorylation.
SUMOylation vs. acetylation
In addition to phosphorylation, acetylation of STAT5 has been shown to be essential for STAT5 to cross the nuclear membrane into the nucleus to enhance gene transcription. Yeh and colleagues found that SUMO competes directly with acetyl groups for the same binding site, inhibiting acetylation.
"Without SENP1 to remove SUMO, STAT5 can't be acetylated or phosphorylated and can't be recycled for use again," Yeh said. "We discovered that SENP1 controls lymphoid development through regulation of SUMOylation of STAT5."
Since Yeh's lab discovered SUMOylation in 1996, SUMO has been found to alter the function of thousands of proteins.
Yeh is hosting the 6th International Conference SUMO, Ubiquitin, UBL Proteins: Implications for Human Diseases Feb. 8-11 in the Dan L. Duncan Building at MD Anderson. Yeh organizes the meeting every other year.
"There used to be so little known about SUMO. Now, a protein is assumed to be SUMOylated until proved otherwise," Yeh said.
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University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center: http://www.mdanderson.org
Thanks to University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Survey suggests family history of psychiatric disorders shapes intellectual interests
Friday, January 27, 2012
A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined. Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.
Although preliminary, the findings provide a new look at the oft-studied link between psychiatric conditions and aptitude in the arts or sciences. While previous studies have explored this link by focusing on highly creative individuals or a person's occupation, the Princeton research indicates that the influence of familial neuropsychiatric traits on personal interests is apparently independent of a person's talent or career path, and could help form a person's basic preferences and personality.
Princeton researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 students from the University's Class of 2014 early in their freshman year to learn which major they would choose based on their intellectual interests. The students were then asked to indicate the incidence of mood disorders, substance abuse or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their family, including parents, siblings and grandparents.
Students interested in pursuing a major in the humanities or social sciences were twice as likely to report that a family member had a mood disorder or a problem with substance abuse. Students with an interest in science and technical majors, on the other hand, were three times more likely to report a sibling with an ASD, a range of developmental disorders that includes autism and Asperger syndrome.
Senior researcher Sam Wang, an associate professor in Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, said that the survey ? though not exhaustive nor based on direct clinical diagnoses ? presents the idea that certain heritable psychiatric conditions are more closely linked to a person's intellectual interests than is currently supposed.
During the past several decades, Wang said, various researchers have found that, in certain people and their relatives, mood or behavior disorders are associated with a higher-than-average representation in careers related to writing and the humanities, while conditions related to autism exhibit a similar correlation with scientific and technical careers.
By focusing on poets, writers and scientists, however, those studies only include people who have advanced far in "artistic" or "scientific" pursuits and professions, potentially excluding a large group of people who have those interests but no particular aptitude or related career, Wang said. He and lead author Benjamin Campbell, a graduate student at Rockefeller University, selected incoming freshmen because the students are old enough to have defined interests, but are not yet on a set career path. (Princeton students do not declare a major until the end of sophomore year.)
"Until our work, evidence of a connection between neuropsychiatric disorders and artistic aptitude, for example, was based on surveying creative people, where creativity is usually defined in terms of occupation or proficiency in an artistic field," Wang said. "But what if there is a broader category of people associated with bipolar or depression, namely people who think that the arts are interesting? The students we surveyed are not all F. Scott Fitzgerald, but many more of them might like to read F. Scott Fitzgerald."
The Princeton research provides a new and "provocative" consideration that other scientists in this area can build upon, said Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychiatry and behavioral science professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the university's Mood Disorders Center.
Jamison, who is well known for her research on bipolar disorder and her work on the artistic/mood disorder connection, said that while interests and choice of career are presumably related, Wang and Campbell present data suggesting that intellectual interests might also be independently shaped by psychiatric conditions, which provides the issue larger context.
In addition, the researchers focused on an age group that is not typically looked at specifically, but that is usually included in analyses that span various ages. Such a targeted approach lends the results a unique perspective, she said. Though the incidence of psychiatric conditions in the Princeton study was based on the students' own reporting and not definitive diagnoses, the rates Wang and Campbell found are not different from other populations, she noted.
"This is an additional way of looking at a complex problem that is very interesting," said Jamison, who played no role in the research project. "This work provides a piece of the puzzle in understanding why people go into particular occupations. In this field, it's important to do as many different kinds of studies as possible, and this is an interesting initial study with very interesting findings. It will provoke people to think about this question and it will provoke people to design other kinds of studies."
An implied connection between psychiatric conditions and a flair for art or science dates to at least Aristotle, who famously noted that those "eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia."
Modern explorations of that relationship have examined the actual prevalence of people with neuropsychiatric disorders and their relatives in particular fields.
Among the most recent work, researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry in November that of the 300,000 people studied, people with bipolar disorder, as well as their healthy parents and siblings, were more likely to have a "creative" job ? including a field in the arts or sciences ? than people with no familial history of the condition. Parents and siblings of people with schizophrenia also exhibited a greater tendency to have a creative job, though people with schizophrenia did not.
Various other studies in the past few decades have found a similar correlation between psychiatric disorders and "creativity," which is typically defined by a person's career or eminence in an artistic field such as writing or music. In their work, however, Wang and Campbell present those criteria as too narrow. They instead suggest that psychiatric disorders can predispose a person to a predilection for the subject matter independent of any concrete measure of creativity.
Jamison, in an editorial regarding the Karolinska study and published in the same journal issue, wrote that "having a creative occupation is not the same thing as being creative." Wang and Campbell approached their project from the inverse of that statement: Being creative does not necessarily mean a person has a creative occupation.
"A person is not just what they do for a living," Wang said. "I am a scientist, but not just a scientist. I'm also a guy who reads blogs, listens to jazz and likes to cook. In that same respect, I believe we have potentially broadened the original assertion of Aristotle by including not just the artistically creative, but a larger category ? all people whose thought processes gravitate to the humanistic and artistic."
As past studies have, Wang and Campbell suggest a genetic basis for their results. The correlation with interests and psychiatric conditions they observed implies that a common genetic path could lead relatives in similar directions, but with some people developing psychiatric disorders while their kin only possess certain traits of those conditions. Those traits can manifest as preferences for and talents in certain areas, Wang said.
"Altogether, results of our study and those like it suggest that scientists should start thinking about the genetic roots of normal function as much as we discuss the genetic causes of abnormal function. This survey helps show that there might be common cause between the two," Wang said.
"Everyone has specific individual interests that result from experiences in life, but these interests arise from a genetic starting point," Wang said. "This doesn't mean that our genes determine our fate. It just means that our genes launch us down a path in life, leading most people to pursue specific interests and, in extreme cases, leading others toward psychiatric disorders."
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Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu
Thanks to Princeton University for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
COMMENTARY | Sometimes a negative political ad can hurt the candidate it's directed at or the one who has put it together. In the case with the upcoming Florida primary for the Republican presidential race, it is the former. The TV ads airing in Florida against Gingrich are out with a vengeance. No wonder one of the leading polls on Friday shows Newt Gingrich falling behind Mitt Romney. Romney leads Gingrich by 8 percentage points in the Reuters/Ipsos poll
During the times when the local and national news are on, in addition to the pre-prime time hours, that's when the political ads run in any given campaign season. It is no different in the Tampa area, where the Republican National Convention is to be held in August. During the week it was the same two negative Gingrich ads playing at every commercial break. This was to the point of overkill where you just had enough. One is Romney's Super PAC ad, the other his attack ad. Unfortunately, negative ads work. I vividly remember for the Florida governor's race in 2010. Rick Scott ran a number of negative ads against his opponent for the general election that obviously worked.
Romney's Super PAC, Restore Our Future, TV ad is titled "Reagan (FL)", reports The Guardian. The Florida primary TV ad shows a montage of how Gingrich would mention "Ronald Reagan" 50 times over the course of many debates during the campaign, even before Iowa and New Hampshire. It opens with "You'd think Newt Gingrich was Ronald Reagan's vice president." If that wasn't enough, it goes on with another barb how Reagan only mentioned Gingrich once in his diary.
To add further insult to injury, President Ronald Reagan, according to this Super PAC, rejected Gingrich's ideas on defense and his thoughts on policy. The final kicker comes with its closing "On leadership and character, Gingrich is no Ronald Reagan." The last line is very reminiscent when Dan Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy and his debate opponent Lloyd Bentsen quickly pointed out "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." What happened to that so-called caring and compassionate candidate Mitt Romney portrays in his Internet ad?
MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) ? Jean-Claude Mas, the Frenchman who sparked a global health scare by selling substandard breast implants, was arrested on Thursday as Marseille prosecutors build a case against him for manslaughter.
In the first arrests since the two-year-old scandal made headlines worldwide in December, Mas and a second executive at his now defunct company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) were seized at their homes in southern France shortly after dawn.
The detention could lead within hours to Mas being placed under formal investigation on suspicion of manslaughter and causing bodily harm. That could in due course lead to criminal charges, which would carry longer sentences than those he now faces in a fraud case expected to be tried around October.
Women who have been campaigning against PIP since French authorities banned its products nearly two years ago welcomed the move as giving them a sense that the law was now in action:
"It's been too long," said Murielle Ajellio, who heads an association for women with implants. Up to now, she said: "You feel like you're fighting against the wind."
French authorities have been criticized for being slow to react to a case that has sown fear among tens of thousands of women who carry PIP implants. French inspectors ordered them off the market in March 2010, due to concerns over their quality.
But only last month did officials in Paris recommend their surgical removal, drawing attention to the problem for patients worldwide who had been fitted with products from the company, which was at one time the third biggest global supplier.
Lawyers for women in France who have filed complaints over PIP implants welcomed the arrests and said there must be no escaping justice for the 72-year-old Mas, who has been quoted as deriding those suing him as being motivated only by money.
"This is a comfort for the victims," said Laurent Gaudon, whose clients are pursuing PIP and surgeons who used its implants for fraud. "It's the feeling that justice is advancing and they have not been forgotten. It's the assurance that the guilty are at last going to be held accountable."
Philippe Courtois, who represents 1,300 people with PIP implants, said Mas should not be freed pending any trial.
Mas and PIP's former chief executive Claude Couty were questioned at home, as police conducted searches. They were then moved to police custody in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, under the orders of prosecutor Jacques Dallest.
SUBSTANDARD SILICONE
PIP enjoyed years of success with international sales, but behind the scenes employees, and Mas himself, have admitted to hiding from certification agencies the fact they were using cheap, industrial silicone, not approved for medical use.
Health authorities in France and elsewhere have stressed that PIP's products carry no proven link to cancer, but surgeons report that they have abnormally high rupture rates. Responses to the problem have varied among different foreign authorities.
Thursday's arrests follow an investigation opened in Marseille, close to PIP's former premises, on December 8 after the death from cancer in 2010 of a woman with PIP implants.
Mas and Couty can be held for up to 48 hours while a judge decides whether to open a formal probe and, if so, what bail conditions, if any, to set.
A trial date could be years away, given the extent of inquiry required, but the graver manslaughter case could make it harder for Mas to avoid appearing in court later this year on other charges of fraud and deception.
That latter case targets half a dozen former PIP executives and could also carry prison terms for them of several years. It has dragged on as investigators have had to quiz up to 2,700 women who have filed complaints over PIP implants.
Mas, who sold some 300,000 implants around the world, has acknowledged that he used unapproved silicone but dismissed fears that it constituted a health risk.
Earlier in January, leaks from a police document showed Mas admitting to lying about the quality of PIP's implants and describing the women filing complaints against him as just seeking money. The comments sparked public anger against him.
PIP closed down in March 2010 after regulators discovered it was using a non-approved, industrial silicone gel, and pulled its implants off the market.
Last month, the French government advised women with PIP implants to have them removed, and said it would pay for the operations in France, sparking alarm around the world.
Officials in several other countries, including Britain and Brazil, have asked women to visit their doctors for checks.
France has called for tighter European Union regulations on medical devices in wake of the PIP affair, saying suppliers of prosthetics should require the same sort of authorization as manufacturers of prescription medicines.
(Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
Republicans and democrats less divided than commonly thoughtPublic release date: 27-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 SAGE Publications
San Diego -- Republicans and Democrats are less divided in their attitudes than popularly believed, according to new research. It is exactly those perceptions of polarization, however, that help drive political engagement, researchers say.
"American polarization is largely exaggerated," says Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder, especially by people who adopt strong political stances. And when people perceive a large gap between political parties, they may be more motivated to vote. That message emerges from analyses of 40 years' worth of voter data and could help predict voting behavior for the 2012 presidential election, according to social psychologists presenting their work today at a conference in San Diego, CA.
Polarization and political engagement
Much of the data comes from the American National Election Studies, a large survey of American's political attitudes and voting behaviors from 1948 to 2008 funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and from a nationally representative sample of American adults from 2008. Using a subset of 26,000 respondents from this data, John Chambers of the University of Florida and colleagues studied the degree to which people estimate differences between Republicans' and Democrats' attitudes. They found that the actual gap between the parties' political attitudes has not increased substantially over time and that members of both parties have consistently overestimated the size of that gap.
Moreover, Chambers' team found that those who perceived the greatest political polarization were more politically engaged for example, more likely to have voted in the last election, tried to influence the vote of other voters, attended political rallies, or donated money to a party or candidate. "These findings may have important implications for election outcomes," Chambers says. "Particularly in close or hotly-contested elections, the balance may be tipped in favor of the party whose members perceive more polarization between the two parties."
Indeed, in the 2008 Presidential election, people who strongly supported either Obama or McCain perceived Americans as more polarized than did people whose support for either of the two candidates was more moderate, according to work by Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder. His NSF-funded study likewise found that people who perceived Americans as more polarized were more inclined to vote in the presidential election compared with people who perceived less polarization independent how strongly they supported Obama or McCain.
Morality drives people to the polls
In another analysis from the 2008 election, moral conviction also significantly predicted the likelihood to vote, even when statistically controlling for people's ideology, says G. Scott Morgan of Drew University. His research team surveyed 827 US residents about their political orientation, intentions to vote, and degrees of moral conviction on several issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage, tax cuts, and healthcare reform. They found that no party holds a monopoly on moral conviction.
The study counters the notion that conservatives' political views and behaviors might be more greatly shaped by morality than those of liberals, Morgan says. Indeed, during the 2012 political campaign, he says "liberals and conservatives seem similarly likely to feel moral conviction about the issues that are important to them."
Moral convictions change factual beliefs
Other researchers are investigating how people view morally controversial political issues. They are finding that people's moral sensibilities shape their perceptions of facts.
Brittany Liu and Peter Ditto of the University of California, Irvine, tested how people's perceptions of the costs and benefits of capital punishment changed when they read essays advocating either its inherent morality or immorality. The essays changed not only participants' perceptions of the inherent morality of capital punishment but also beliefs about whether capital punishment deterred future crime or led to miscarriages of justice. "Changing participants' moral beliefs led to corresponding changes in factual beliefs," Liu says.
Related survey work found a similar pattern of results across many different issues, including forceful interrogations, stem cell research, abstinence-only sexual education, and global warming. The results help explain some of the major impediments to bipartisan cooperation, Liu says. "For both liberals and conservatives, there is no clean separation between moral intuitions and factual beliefs," she says. "This affects how politicians and partisans interpret scientific and economic data, making compromise difficult as both sides hold drastically different beliefs about the relevant facts and data."
###
A press conference on this research "Political Ideology: Red v. Blue in a Presidential Election Year" takes place on Jan. 27, 2012, at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). More than 3,000 scientists are in attendance at the meeting in San Diego from Jan. 26-28 (http://www.spspmeeting.org).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. With more than 7,000 members, the Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world (http://www.spsp.org).
Contacts:
Lisa M.P. Munoz, SPSP Public Information Officer
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
John Chambers, University of Florida
jrchamb@ufl.edu
352-273-2162
Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado
vanboven@colorado.edu
720-771-2261
G. Scott Morgan, Drew University
smorgan@drew.edu
973-408-3970
Peter Ditto
phditto@uci.edu
949-824-8168
[ | 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.
Republicans and democrats less divided than commonly thoughtPublic release date: 27-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 SAGE Publications
San Diego -- Republicans and Democrats are less divided in their attitudes than popularly believed, according to new research. It is exactly those perceptions of polarization, however, that help drive political engagement, researchers say.
"American polarization is largely exaggerated," says Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder, especially by people who adopt strong political stances. And when people perceive a large gap between political parties, they may be more motivated to vote. That message emerges from analyses of 40 years' worth of voter data and could help predict voting behavior for the 2012 presidential election, according to social psychologists presenting their work today at a conference in San Diego, CA.
Polarization and political engagement
Much of the data comes from the American National Election Studies, a large survey of American's political attitudes and voting behaviors from 1948 to 2008 funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and from a nationally representative sample of American adults from 2008. Using a subset of 26,000 respondents from this data, John Chambers of the University of Florida and colleagues studied the degree to which people estimate differences between Republicans' and Democrats' attitudes. They found that the actual gap between the parties' political attitudes has not increased substantially over time and that members of both parties have consistently overestimated the size of that gap.
Moreover, Chambers' team found that those who perceived the greatest political polarization were more politically engaged for example, more likely to have voted in the last election, tried to influence the vote of other voters, attended political rallies, or donated money to a party or candidate. "These findings may have important implications for election outcomes," Chambers says. "Particularly in close or hotly-contested elections, the balance may be tipped in favor of the party whose members perceive more polarization between the two parties."
Indeed, in the 2008 Presidential election, people who strongly supported either Obama or McCain perceived Americans as more polarized than did people whose support for either of the two candidates was more moderate, according to work by Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder. His NSF-funded study likewise found that people who perceived Americans as more polarized were more inclined to vote in the presidential election compared with people who perceived less polarization independent how strongly they supported Obama or McCain.
Morality drives people to the polls
In another analysis from the 2008 election, moral conviction also significantly predicted the likelihood to vote, even when statistically controlling for people's ideology, says G. Scott Morgan of Drew University. His research team surveyed 827 US residents about their political orientation, intentions to vote, and degrees of moral conviction on several issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage, tax cuts, and healthcare reform. They found that no party holds a monopoly on moral conviction.
The study counters the notion that conservatives' political views and behaviors might be more greatly shaped by morality than those of liberals, Morgan says. Indeed, during the 2012 political campaign, he says "liberals and conservatives seem similarly likely to feel moral conviction about the issues that are important to them."
Moral convictions change factual beliefs
Other researchers are investigating how people view morally controversial political issues. They are finding that people's moral sensibilities shape their perceptions of facts.
Brittany Liu and Peter Ditto of the University of California, Irvine, tested how people's perceptions of the costs and benefits of capital punishment changed when they read essays advocating either its inherent morality or immorality. The essays changed not only participants' perceptions of the inherent morality of capital punishment but also beliefs about whether capital punishment deterred future crime or led to miscarriages of justice. "Changing participants' moral beliefs led to corresponding changes in factual beliefs," Liu says.
Related survey work found a similar pattern of results across many different issues, including forceful interrogations, stem cell research, abstinence-only sexual education, and global warming. The results help explain some of the major impediments to bipartisan cooperation, Liu says. "For both liberals and conservatives, there is no clean separation between moral intuitions and factual beliefs," she says. "This affects how politicians and partisans interpret scientific and economic data, making compromise difficult as both sides hold drastically different beliefs about the relevant facts and data."
###
A press conference on this research "Political Ideology: Red v. Blue in a Presidential Election Year" takes place on Jan. 27, 2012, at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). More than 3,000 scientists are in attendance at the meeting in San Diego from Jan. 26-28 (http://www.spspmeeting.org).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. With more than 7,000 members, the Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world (http://www.spsp.org).
Contacts:
Lisa M.P. Munoz, SPSP Public Information Officer
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
John Chambers, University of Florida
jrchamb@ufl.edu
352-273-2162
Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado
vanboven@colorado.edu
720-771-2261
G. Scott Morgan, Drew University
smorgan@drew.edu
973-408-3970
Peter Ditto
phditto@uci.edu
949-824-8168
[ | 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.
TRADE GAP: The devastating March tsunami and shift of manufacturing overseas due to the stronger yen plunged Japan's trade account into the red for the first year since 1980.
WORLD PAIN: Weakness in the U.S. economy, Europe's debt problems and the recent flooding in Thailand, which disrupted production for Japanese automakers, also contributed to export declines.
FUTURE: Some economists predicted that the trade balance would be in the black again within two years, but the years of Japan running massive trade surpluses are likely over.
NAPLES, Fla. ? Buoyed by strong crowds, Republican Newt Gingrich put a greater emphasis Tuesday on a possible matchup with President Barack Obama and spent less time drawing contrasts with GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney.
The former House speaker saw his crowd sizes swell into the thousands, including an event at a U.S. flag-draped Sarasota airport hangar and another overflow event at a town square in Naples. He also enjoyed a burst of fundraising with a week to go before Florida's presidential primary. An official at a political action committee backing his White House bid said they were buying $6 million in Florida ad time.
All day, Gingrich made brief mentions of Romney. Gingrich referred to his rival as the moderate in a race where conservative credentials matter most. He linked Romney to Florida's former Republican governor-turned-independent, Charlie Crist, by talking about campaign staffers common to both men.
But he swung harder at Obama, saying he would offer the most striking choice against the incumbent in a November election.
Gingrich's remarks were partially timed to Tuesday night's State of the Union address. Gingrich said Obama should stop blaming his Republican predecessor for the country's economic woes.
"This is the fourth year of his presidency. He needs to get over it," Gingrich said. "A friend of mine says, `He has shifted from Yes We Can to Why We Couldn't.'"
Barely a half-year after his campaign all but imploded, Gingrich is reveling in a surge. He rebounded from disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire to trounce Romney in South Carolina. Since then, he has shot to the front of many polls in Florida and nationally.
It's showing in his campaign finances, too. Gingrich officials said they raised more than $2 million since his win Saturday in South Carolina and expected hundreds of thousands more from finance events Tuesday.
A fundraising appeal sent out to supporters Tuesday underscored the new-found confidence.
"There is no longer any doubt that we can win the GOP nomination," Gingrich says in the pitch.
Winning Our Future, a Super PAC run by former Gingrich adviser Rick Tyler, said separately it would use its newly purchased ad time to criticize Romney on health care. Romney approved a health law as governor of Massachusetts that some have described as a model for the controversial insurance mandate achieved by Obama.
The PAC is financed largely by the family of a Las Vegas casino magnate.
___
Associated Press writer Shannon McCaffrey in Atlanta contributed to this report.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama offered?a?laundry list?of new tax subsidies but said almost nothing about a top-to-bottom rewrite of the Tax Code.?
For a while there, I thought President Obama was going to embrace tax reform in his?State of the Union?address.? Instead, following the lead of his predecessors, he offered?a?laundry list?of new tax subsidies, bragged about some old ones, and said almost nothing about a top-to-bottom rewrite of the Tax Code.
Skip to next paragraph
Here?s just a partial list of the targeted tax breaks Obama promoted: Tax credits for clean energy and college tuition, as well as?tax?cuts for small business that create jobs,?domestic manufacturers,?high-tech manufacturers, and?companies that close overseas plants and move production back to the U.S.
At the same time, he?d require individuals making more than $1 million to pay an effective income tax rate of at least 30 percent, in part by eliminating their ability to take many deductions. And, he?d use the tax code to punish companies that do business overseas, creating a new minimum levy that is supposed to assure that all multinationals pay some U.S. tax.
Obama?s embrace of the tax code as a vehicle to pick winners and losers sounded more than a little discordant in a speech whose theme was ?everyone gets a fair shot and plays by the same set of rules.?? Not so much in a tax code where you get special rules for the government?s favored activities.
As Obama was tossing out his tax baubles, I kept wondering about those firms that somehow didn?t get on his gift list. I can just imagine lobbyists? cell phones abuzz from furious clients wondering why they weren?t getting a tax break of their very own.
For instance, think about a start-up software company that has to compete with an established firm. Because new businesses rarely make money in their first years, extra tax deductions do them no good. By contrast, a more established competitor, especially if it can qualify for Obama?s high-tech tax break, would benefit?perhaps substantially.
The?multinationals??minimum tax?would be entirely unworkable. Even if Congress passed the levy, which it won?t, those firms will find ways around it. Minimum taxes are Band-Aides for a flawed tax system. The solution is not to create a new?penalty for firms that learn to manipulate the law, it is to fix the basic law in the first place.
If Obama wants to prevent companies from gaming the system, he could lower the corporate rate and eliminate tax preferences. He raised this in last year?s?state of the union address?but did nothing about it. That?s too bad. With a low enough domestic tax rate, companies would have less incentive to shuffle income overseas.
Or he could go in the opposite direction and eliminate deferral, the practice that allows multinationals to avoid U.S. tax until they bring earnings back to the U.S. But this minimum tax seems to be a half-measure that may play to his populist base but will achieve little.
I suppose it is inevitable that a president beginning his fourth year in office and facing a deeply divided Congress would go small-bore. After all, there will be no fundamental tax reform in the current environment and even proposing such a step would only open him to criticism from the usual suspects in housing, non-profits, finance and other industries that are very happy with the system as it is.
Still, it is a shame that, instead, Obama would make things worse.
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) ? The United Nations will send its investigating judge to resume work at the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, despite moves by the government to have him replaced, a top envoy said Wednesday.
Cambodia had no authority to block Swiss Laurent Kasper-Ansermet from taking up the post under a 2003 agreement between the government and the United Nations, said David Scheffer, special expert on U.N. assistance to the Khmer Rouge trials.
Scheffer said Kasper-Ansermet would go to work on investigating two more unidentified suspects in the highly controversial cases being referred to as 003 and 004, which relate to their roles in the "year zero" revolution that killed as many as 2.2 million Cambodians from 1975-1979.
The two cases have been a source of acrimony in the tribunal and have led to heated disagreements and several resignations. Cambodia's government is vehemently against indicting the two suspects, who are widely believed to be former Khmer Rouge military commanders.
"We do look forward to the judge returning to this country from his commitment in Switzerland this week and we look forward to him working on building a credible case files in case 3 and 4," Scheffer told reporters after meeting government officials.
"Recognizing that we believe in our interpretation of the (2003) agreement, namely regardless of that breach, the judge has full authority to operate as the international investigating judge," he said.
Critics have accused Cambodia's government of trying to prevent further cases from being investigated and Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has even warned of a civil war if more indictments are issued.
CONTROVERSIAL CASES
The government said Monday its judicial bodies had full authority to reject judges if they did not consider them suitable and the United Nations was "confused" about an agreement it signed.
It gave no response Wednesday to Scheffer's announcement that the judge would return. Cambodian officials have said the government felt Kasper-Ansermet was unsuitable because he had used his Twitter account to draw attention to a debate over whether to purse cases 003 and 004.
The hybrid U.N.-Cambodian court is hearing case 002, involving three top members of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Prosecutors have appealed the unexplained decision by a previous international judge Siegfried Blunk -- who resigned in October -- not to indict the two additional suspects, despite what rights groups say is overwhelming evidence to build a case against them.
Blunk's official reason for quitting was political interference.
The court, set up in 2005, has handed down just one sentence, a 35-year jail term commuted to 19 years for Kaing Guek Eav, also know as Duch, for his role in the deaths of more than 14,000 people at a torture center in Phnom Penh.
His appeal is due to be heard on February 3.
(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)
LOSING STEAM: Industrial equipment maker Siemens AG said Tuesday that net profit fell 17 percent to euro1.46 billion ($1.89 billion) in the final quarter of 2011 due to delays in major wind-power and rail projects.
EUROPE DEBT IMPACT: CEO Peter Loescher said the result showed that troubles In financial markets from Europe's debt crisis "have left their mark on the real economy" through weaker demand.
WORLD VIEW: Siemens fortunes are a clue to demand in the global economy, since the company is active far beyond its German home ? in the U.S., Asia and the developing world.
The Feds put the smackdown on Megaupload and its whole executive team last week, charging the them with criminal charges for copyright infringement and racketeering in addition to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. As a result, it appears that several other cloud locker companies have curbed their sharing ways to avoid similar DOJ entanglements. FileSonic and Fileserve have eliminated file sharing from their service menus, and Uploaded.to is no longer available to those of us in the US. Naturally, none of these companies have said that Megaupload's legal problems are the reason for the changes, but the timing suggests it's more than mere coincidence. Disagree? Feel free to speculate about the possibilities in the comments below, and let us know if any other online storage services have made similar moves while you're at it.
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'She probably has a buzzed head,' actress tells MTV News at Sundance of her character Maeby Fünke. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Eric Ditzian
Alia Shawkat Photo: MTV News
PARK CITY, Utah — If you're looking for a surefire way to end a conversation with Alia Shawkat, look no further than bringing up the subject of "Arrested Development."
That scare tactic applies to most "Arrested" veterans, who've had to field questions about a possible onscreen Bluth reunion ever since the cult Fox comedy came to a close in 2006, even more so since the 2011 announcement of a new TV miniseries and feature film. Shawkat is no exception, as MTV News learned while speaking with the erstwhile Maeby Fünke at the Sundance Film Festival, where she's promoting the Carrie Preston-directed comedy "That's What She Said."
Asked about the future of "Arrested Development," Shawkat reacted as any sane actor would: She attempted to flee the scene. But just like Maeby, who could always invent a way out of trouble, Shawkat eventually opted for a different approach: diving into any and all "Arrested" questions head-on.
"They're writing it now, though we haven't seen any scripts yet," the comedian said about the developing "Arrested" status. "But we're all game."
As for what is in Maeby's future, Shawkat could only guess. "She'd be my age [by now]," she said. "She probably wouldn't go to college. She's probably figured out some weird schemes to get money really fast, and she probably has a buzzed head and is dating some French painter."
French painter? What, no love for George Michael?
"Oh, I don't know," she laughed. "Feels kind of creepy. I love [Michael Cera], but the whole first-cousin thing ... "
No matter what comes next, and even in light of Shawkat's initial fight-or-flight reaction, the comedian said she's very much hoping to dive back into the "Arrested" universe after all these years.
"It's been kind of following me around like a very attractive albatross," she said. "But now it's hopefully going to happen. It would be very exciting."
The 2012 Sundance Film Festival is officially under way, and the MTV Movies team is on the ground reporting on the hottest stars and the movies everyone will be talking about in the year to come. Keep it locked with MTV Movies for everything there is to know about Sundance.
We've had a lot of Gina Carano coverage lately, as the onetime Strikeforce title contender has been making the rounds to promote her movie "Haywire." This might be considered piling on, but during her appearance on "The Conan O'Brien Show," she talked about why she got into MMA and how fighting is like sex. It's not quite NSFW, but definitely PG.
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Public release date: 27-Jan-2012
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