Monthly Archives: June 2017

‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Firefighters Spinoff Probably Won’t Feature Original Cast Members – Moviefone

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Get ready to see some new faces in Seattle! The planned "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff revolving around firefighters is going to feature all-new characters.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, none of the current regulars on "Grey's Anatomy" are likely to move over to the spinoff. Fans had speculated that Jason George, who plays resident Ben Warren, might star in the spinoff, since he worked closely with firefighters in the season finale. But it seems Shonda Rhimes is opting to focus on new faces.

While the news of the spinoff came as a surprise during ABC's upfronts presentation to advertisers, it's been in the works for some time.

"he discussions have been going on for a while earlier than this season. It was up to Shonda to tell us when she had inspiration for something that made sense, which was pretty recent," ABC Studios president Patrick Moran told THR.

"We talked about the elements of 'Grey's Anatomy' that seem to resonate with the audience emotional storytelling, deep human connection, a high-stakes environment and strong and empowered women and those elements will carry over to the spinoff."

The firefighters project is the second spinoff of "Grey's Anatomy," after "Private Practice." And Rhimes has had other spinoff ideas, like one about Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) and his history in the military.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Anatomy of Suffering – Center for Research on Globalization

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The Chiostro Del Bramante, a cloister-turned-gallery in the heart of Rome, is currently presenting Jean-Michel Basquiat: New York City a generous selection of work spanning the short, but immensely prolific, career of this extraordinary artist. The extensive exhibition includes nearly one hundred significant works on loan from the Mugrabi Collection, which includes acrylics and oils, as well as drawings, silkscreen prints, and ceramics completed between the years of 1981 and 1987.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiats stunning and breathtakingly rapid ascent to fame and stardom was paralleled by few, if any, other artists in the twentieth century. At Sothebys recently, Basquiats painting of a skull, Untitled (1982) sold for $110.5 million a record price for an American painter, placing him in the art history pantheon alongside Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon. We can be pleased that Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese billionaire who bought the painting, intends to share his taste for art with the public. However, if we are to truly approach these works at all, it is necessary to get beyond the din of the market the screeching vultures as the late John Berger puts it and give our attention to the sophistication and wit of this painter, the sincerity and exuberance of his canvases.

Untitled, 1982 (Source: Sothebys New York via artnet News)

From the first early portraits in the exhibit, we see Basquiats confident and energetic line, which he used to tremendous expressive effect throughout his career. We also find Basquiats characteristic use of haloes; and most recognizably, the three-pronged gold crown, which he would use to establish the dignity and worth of something or someone, or simply as an assertion of the artists power.

The crown features prominently in Loin (1982), a painting of a horned bull alongside a bloody knife. On the one hand, we seem to have a sacrificial offering: loin as in a cut of beef, a tenderloin. On the other hand, a symbol of sacred strength and power (the bull was in fact one of Zeus divine manifestations, a form he took when he seduced and abducted Europa). In this case, the loin is the creative, generative potency of the artist himself, in what amounts to a kind of self-portrait. Similarly, Pablo Picasso, who influenced Basquiat greatly, depicted himself as a quadruped in his etching Minotauromachy (1935) and included an image of a bull in Guernica (1937), a painting which Basquiat credited as being among one of his all-time favorites.

Loin, 1982(Source: David Bird / Pinterest)

There is no escaping violence in Basquiat, and while it is sometimes presented upfront with the intention to arrest and confront the viewer there is often an indeterminate sense of menace. In Side View of an Oxens Jaw (1982) Basquiat may be invoking the story of Samson a Biblical figure who slew the masses of Philistines armed with only the jawbone of an ass. Basquiat would explicitly revisit Samson in one of his most successful paintings, Obnoxious Liberals (1982) identifying himself with the black hero/martyr that reappears in so much of his work.

Hand Anatomy (1982) brings our attention to one of the fundamental themes of the show and Basquiats work throughout his career. Basquiats knowledge of art history was apparently encyclopedic: he painted in dialogue with many of the masters who preceded him and his works are full of such references. Leonardo da Vinci looms large in this sense, not only as a painter (Basquiat seems to have regarded Da Vinci as among his favorite artists), but as a student of human anatomy and physiology. Da Vinci is known to have secretly dissected human cadavers (a practice widely condemned at the time) to understand more fully the inner workings and processes of the human body. Basquiat may have been attracted to this readiness to go underground, as it were; and like da Vinci, he had to escape and outmaneuver the conventions of ordinary social morality to bring to light something that we are almost afraid to see; something that by its very nature interrogates our tendency to conform to established modes of understanding and discourse.

The exhibition includes several works that Basquiat and Andy Warhol painted together. The two had a highly-publicized friendship which led to an exhibition of their collaborative works at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho in 1985. Warhol and Basquiat: Paintings was panned by the critics, a reception which contributed to the dissolution of their personal and professional relationship. In Thin Lips (c. 1984-1985) (which is to say, false promises) the two artists satirize Reaganomics. Basquiats work was political throughout, and sometimes his works are most-effectively political when the content is not explicitly so.

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Source: WideWalls)

At his best, Basquiat can be viewed as an American shaman: an artist who brought meaning to a fragmented society by acting as a conduit to another realm of consciousness. In his appropriation of so-called primitive art and renaissance iconography especially the halo (which sometimes becomes a crown of thorns) he created a unique vocabulary that he developed as a way of exploring a broken world. Much like the writer William Burroughs, who was a profound influence on the painter, Basquiat is charting a kind of guide to the underworld employing Ancient Egyptian glyphs and petroglyphs, as well as hobo signs, in his mapping of the in-visible.

Basquiats art is inseparable from language that is, from the power and sometimes the impotency of names, lists and phrases: and even among his earliest pieces we find him charting words and letters in semi-incantatory ways. He saw the disintegration and brutality of everyday life in America: for Basquiat, the world is in tatters, and because of this, his work tends to lack a center as well as a privileged point of reference. If we could talk about the metaphysics of Basquiats world, then it was one of violent explosiveness he taps into the dehiscence of being to create something altogether unsettling, evocative, and distinct.

Basquiat does not abandon, but transforms, the project of high modernism inasmuch as his paintings are indeed an autobiographical search for wholeness. There is, we might say, a therapeutic intention underlying his work: he seemed to want (at least at times) to heal the self to repel ghosts (as one of his late works states).

Some of the later paintings seem to suggest that he saw the end was near: for example, the extraordinary painting Riding with Death (1988), or the final piece included in this show Gravestone (1987), a work which consists of three doors joined together and the word perishable partially blotted out at the top center. This was, on the one hand, a tribute to Andy Warhol (who died that year), and it evokes the painted panel altars of medieval and renaissance art. Like so much of his work, it represents Basquiats pattern of salvaging and resurrecting the rejected and discarded. But one must wonder if this piece could also be seen as a requiem for the artist himself, as he was coming to terms with his own self-destruction (he died in 1988 from a heroin overdose).

Gravestone, 1987 (Source:Cie Cefeg / Pinterest)

Much of this exhibition concerns, we might say, the anatomy of suffering, and at the same time the strength, resilience and protest that comes from the stripping down, the peeling away of the outer layers to reveal the blood vessels, the muscles and tendons, and the skeleton itself. In Rusting Red Car in Kuau (1984) with its engine (that is, its anatomy) visible, we are witness to another form of Basquiats self-portraiture.

Basquiats work remains immensely provocative, often disconcerting, barbed and defiant scathing in his critique of the racism, greed and moral apathy of American society. He takes a wrecking ball not only to false barriers between conceptualism and expressionism, painting and writing, imp
rovisation, and composition; but to the various social, political, and artistic edifices we have built atop lies. As Berger observed, if Basquiat is an artist whose work is about seeing through lies, then we cannot deny his timeliness and the claim his work ultimately makes on us.

Sam Ben-Meir, PhD is an adjunct professor at Mercy College. His current research focuses on environmental ethics and animal studies.[emailprotected] Web: http://www.alonben-meir.com

Featured image: basquiat.com

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Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Anatomy of Suffering - Center for Research on Globalization

Anatomy of a clusterfuck: How ‘strong and stable’ Theresa May messed up so entirely – The Spinoff

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What the hell just happened? The Guardians Richard Adams attempts to make sense of the shock UK election outcome.

The UK election result is the biggest upset of conventional wisdom since, well, last November. After Trump, the Brexit referendum, Leicester City winning the premier league and the 2015 UK general election result youd think wed be getting used to this. But no.

The Conservative partys decision to call a snap election has backfired: rather than winning the comfortable-to-huge majority predicted, the Tories have instead gone backwards. The party has held enough seats to govern in coalition with Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist party but it was a miserable effort in almost every other respect.

Nervous and ill-advised, Theresa May achieved the unthinkable: winning more than 42% of the popular vote but losing a swathe of seats in England. (In 2005 Tony Blair won 35% of the vote but a solid majority of MPs.) Labour under Jeremy Corbyn got around 40% and gained more than 30 seats. The Tories piled up wasted votes in safe seats and failed to go beyond their comfort zone to win votes in London and the east of England. And that in a nutshell is why May lost as she did.

Why did the Tories do so badly in its England heartland? Brexit the referendum to leave the European Union hung over this election like an embarrassing smell. The UK Independent Party (UKIP) collapsed as predicted, having won the EU exit it sought, but its voters didnt obediently file back to the Tories as the pundits expected. Enough perhaps 40% returned to Labour to make a difference.

And then there was the 18-30 youth vote. Largely pro-Labour but with a poor record of actually voting, this time the youth turned out in higher proportions, with the exact amount as yet unconfirmed. This is a major reason why so many polls got it so wrong: they assumed that voting behaviour wouldnt change much. But young people appeared more exercised by Brexit and Labours policies including the scrapping of student tuition fees that currently stand at 9000 a year.

The pollsters performance brings to mind the football pundit Alan Hansen, who once rubbished Manchester Uniteds chances of winning the English league: You cant win anything with kids. One of those kids was David Beckham, and we know what happened next.

But Labour under Jeremy Corbyn also did better than expected with older voters, thanks in part to returning UKIP voters and perhaps as a result of Theresa Mays overconfident campaign that offered its key base of supporters a dementia tax and downgraded pension protection.

The Conservative campaign overall was nightmarish, revolving around Mays strong and stable leadership backed by lurid excesses by the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Sun. As tactics go thats fine but May herself couldnt carry its weight. She refused to debate with Corbyn, was generally lacklustre and failed to offer any detail about how the Tories planned to negotiate Brexit. The single biggest political issue on the table and May ignored it to concentrate on domestic policies. This played into Labours hands, disastrously, by moving debate to Labours strengths: spending on health, education and social services.

Then the campaign was twice derailed by two terrorist attacks. The attack in Manchester came just as almost every newspaper was printing front pages deriding Mays dementia tax U-turn. They all changed overnight to describe the Manchester carnage.

But the later London Bridge attack may have eroded Mays image of competence. As Home Secretary for five years she had been responsible for policing and domestic security. After London a string of complaints appeared about how the attackers had been allowed to enter and remain in the UK, along with steep cuts in police numbers that also happened on Mays watch.

Although election campaigns rarely have a major effect on final results, the closeness of the UK result suggests too many voters were unimpressed by May and her team. Perhaps convinced by those polls predicting huge Conservative majorities, the Tory strategists played it safe. No hostages to fortune on Brexit, giving themselves plenty of room of taxes, and a readoption of some ancient Tory policies like bringing back fox hunting and grammar schools, when the result indicates that UKIP and potential Labour voters dont give a damn about either.

The other caveat about election campaigns is that they do help the profile of under-exposed leaders. In that sense the snap election was a relief for Jeremy Corbyn: it halted Labours infighting and allowed him to approach the public directly. He was helped, it seems, by the growth of left-wing activism on the web a Buzzfeed survey of Facebook found that aggressively pro-Corbyn and Labour news was shared far more widely than similar efforts for the Conservatives.

By avoiding Brexit discussion during the campaign, May gave Corbyn an opening that he rushed to fill with populist policies. The Conservatives offered nothing in response apart from slogans about stability and Brexit meaning Brexit. In her one major speech May even claimed that Brexit required a return to grammar schools (that is, schools reserved for the most able children as selected by an exam sat by 11-year-olds). It was, incredibly, perhaps her most concrete policy statement of the election.

Outside of England and Wales where Labour continued to dominate despite the nations huge pro-Brexit vote the Conservatives did much better. In Scotland the independence issue rivalled Brexit as a vote driver. In 2015 the pro-independence vote flocked to the SNP. This time it seems that the pro-Unionist vote coaleased in response around the Tories, hence their success. The SNPs meltdown will be one of the elections major political aftermaths.

But what happens next? Conventional wisdom would go like this: the Tories form a coalition with the DUP of Northern Ireland; May eventually steps down as PM to be replaced by Boris Johnson; the Tories present a populist Budget with tax cuts and NHS funding galore which gets voted down, followed by another snap election in, lets see, November? February?

But who knows? New Zealanders will recognise that governments can be sustained with slim majorities. The UK did just have five years of coalition government so its not so unlikely. Well all be finding out a lot more about the DUP, its policies and the foibles of Belfast and Ulster politics. Foxes are probably safe for the time being.

Meanwhile the clock ticks towards Brexit whatever Brexit means now.

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Anatomy of a clusterfuck: How 'strong and stable' Theresa May messed up so entirely - The Spinoff

Harmonize conflicting regulations for genetically engineered plants and animals – Nature.com

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Jenn Ackerman/NYT/Redux/eyevine

Gene-edited cattle such as these hornless cows may come under scrutiny by the US Food and Drug Administration.

In January this year, two US agencies proposed the first substantial overhaul in 30 years of how they regulate genetically altered crops and livestock. Some plant scientists expressed relief. Some animal researchers used more colourful language.

The proposals one to govern plants, the other to govern animals came to wildly different conclusions. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests that many plants whose genomes have been altered by a single DNA letter change should not need approval before being released in the field. However, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) contends that animals whose genomes have been similarly changed might have to go through a rigorous evaluation before being released onto the market.

For the two agencies to evaluate the same problem and come to opposite conclusions is worrisome. The deadline for public comment is 19June researchers should seize this chance to push for a scientific and harmonized approach.

The USDA oversees the transport and release of plants that could pose a threat to the nations agricultural system. The agency used that remit to cover plants that have been genetically altered using molecular tools harvested from plant pathogens. A form of the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, for example, was often used to shuttle genes into plant genomes. But even as the regulations were being crafted, technology was marching ahead. Researchers developed ways to express foreign genes in plants without using a pest. By 2011, the USDA found itself unable to oversee a host of new crops because they were engineered by other techniques and could not be classified as potential plant pests.

The FDA, meanwhile, has co-opted regulations that are designed to govern the approval of animal drugs. FDA oversight is triggered by the genetic engineering of an animal (generally taken to mean the splicing together of DNA sequences from different sources). This has left researchers in industry and academia uncertain as to whether the FDA would regulate animals that have been developed using modern gene-editing techniques, which dont necessarily insert foreign DNA. Such techniques are already being used in the lab to develop disease-resistant pigs, among other animals. One company, Recombinetics of St Paul, Minnesota, which is hoping to bring its hornless dairy cattle to market, filed a notification to the FDA a month before the proposals were released.

Almost any gene-edited livestock could be encompassed by the FDAs regulations. Yet gene-edited plants would be regulated only if they are pests or noxious weeds.

It might be asking too much to demand complete consistency across agencies. USDA or FDA staffers are not free to conjure regulations as they see fit: they are also confined by agency-specific statutes. This is why some definitions differ, and some approaches such as treating the engineered genome of a goat as an animal drug do not seem intuitive.

Gene-editing and other technologies clearly pose a challenge for regulators. Legislative definitions can quickly expire with the next technological development. Regulators in Europe, for example, have been struggling for years to incorporate new technologies into their framework. Canada, which regulates its crops on the basis of their attributes rather than the process used to generate them, is one of the few countries with a system that is able to adapt to advances. Meanwhile, it is still hard to tell how consumers will view gene-edited foods when they reach the market.

For the two agencies to evaluate the same problem and come to opposite conclusions is worrisome.

But both the solutions proposed in the United States have the potential to err, albeit in opposite directions. Regulating all gene-edited animals may make little sense for a change that merely reproduces a DNA sequence found in nature, or that could be recreated by using chemicals to randomly mutate DNA. Conversely, waving through many edited crops could under-regulate some with the potential to alter agricultural ecosystems. For example, a herbicide-tolerant plant could lead to changes in spraying that generate herbicide-resistant weeds.

It is unclear whether or how President Donald Trumps appointees will influence the development of these regulations. But researchers should take the opportunity to be heard, to scrutinize proposed definitions, look for loopholes and suggest alternatives to reduce the likelihood that the regulations will soon become outdated. Above all, they should push for regulations that are consistent across agencies, with an emphasis on evaluating the risks posed by the final product. Some researchers may feel that simple gene edits, such as those that reproduce a naturally occurring mutation, deserve no scrutiny. Others may have reservations about those same products. Let all of those voices be heard or endure another 30 years of ill-fitting regulations.

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Harmonize conflicting regulations for genetically engineered plants and animals - Nature.com

FBI gets synthetic biology crash course at CSU – Source

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For one week in May, 11 agents and analysts from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation were on campus for an intensive training program spearheaded by one of the universitys preeminent biotechnologists. The goal: giving the law enforcement personnel foundational knowledge and insight into the rapidly evolving field of synthetic biology.

Jean Peccoud, the Abell Endowed Chair in Synthetic Biology in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, organized the session with the FBI. Peccoud is a computational and cell biologist whose research is in the development of novel DNA molecules, and improving the manufacture of bio-based drugs and vaccines.

At first glance, a relationship between synthetic biology researchers and the nations top law enforcement agency might seem incongruous. Consider, though, the rapid development of genetic engineering techniques over the last several years. The agents who visited campus were part of the FBIs Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, whose purview includes preventing and responding to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents.

The WMD Directorate is working to build relationships with universities and industry partners to become educated on trends in biological research from the manufacture of living organism-based vaccines, to the synthesis of new genes in the lab, said William So, Policy and Program Specialist with the FBIs Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorates Biological Countermeasures Unit.

The emergence of big data within the life sciences, and the digitized stores of data that could be vulnerable to cyberattacks, has also pushed the agency to become better versed in these areas. Ultimately, the agency is charged with protecting such systems against terrorism, espionage, or the leaking of proprietary information.

The amount of research and information in the biotechnology fields is increasing exponentially, So said. Its important for us to have hands-on experience to better understand how biological experimentation occurs.

The workshop was the first of its kind at CSU; Peccoud previously led a scaled-down pilot workshop at his former university, Virginia Tech. The CSU workshop consisted of lectures on research trends by Peccoud and other CSU experts. It also included blocks of lab time for training participants to perform typical synthetic biology techniques, such as assembling DNA molecules.

For example, the trainees used Gibson Assembly to make DNA and transfer it to E. coli cells for manufacturing insulin. This lab work was led by Neil Adames, a research scientist in Peccouds lab.

This experiment gave the participants insight into a foundational method of producing biologic drugs within the pharmaceutical industry. It illustrated the aspirations of both scientists and DIYBio communities to engineer genes with powerful new properties.

Our motivation here is to help people working in the field to critically analyze information they are getting about breakthroughs and trends in biological engineering and research, Peccoud said. It is one thing to talk to scientists at conferences or read papers, but it is another to get hands-on training and to have an understanding of what certain concepts mean in practice.

Other activities included a talk about CRISPR and genome editing by University Distinguished Professor Jan Leach; a visit to the biochemistry protein purification facility; a tour of BioMARC, the universitys biologics manufacturing research facility; and an overview of CSUs biosafety policies led by Bob Ellis of the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Peccoud envisions the weeklong training to be offered regularly, and possibly to become available to other federal agencies and corporate partners

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FBI gets synthetic biology crash course at CSU - Source

Behavioral 'Nudges' Offer a Cost-Effective Policy Tool – Harvard Business School

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Governments around the world have increasingly turned to behavioral science to help address various policy problems new research shows that some of the best-known strategies derived from behavioral science, commonly referred to as nudges, may be extremely cost effective. The new study, which examined the cost-effectiveness of nudges and typical intervention strategies like financial incentives side-by-side, found that nudges often yield particularly high returns at a low cost when it comes to boosting retirement savings, college enrollment, energy conservation, and vaccination rates.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The changes in behavior produced by nudges tend be quite cost effective relative to those produced by traditional policy tools so there is a big opportunity to use nudging more widely in government in conjunction with traditional policy tools, says Professor Katherine L. Milkman of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the authors of the new study.

Our findings show that its important to calculate and report the cost effectiveness of available policy tools, and not simply the impact of an intervention without an adjustment for cost, adds study co-author Professor John Beshears of Harvard Business School. This will facilitate wiser decisions by governments and other organizations regarding which policy tools to use under various circumstances.

Nudges which are now being tested and implemented by government agencies in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the United States diverge from traditional policy tools in that they encourage certain behaviors without restricting an individuals options or exacting financial penalties.

Read more about the findings in Psychological Science.

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Behavioral 'Nudges' Offer a Cost-Effective Policy Tool - Harvard Business School

Ecologists protest sudden end of NSF dissertation grants – Science Magazine

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NSF grants for doctoral dissertations have helped researchers address a wide range of questions, including how land use affects insects that pollinate economically important cotton plants.

By Jeffrey MervisJun. 9, 2017 , 1:00 PM

A grants program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) that has helped launch the careers of thousands of U.S. biologists and environmental scientists is ending after becoming a victim of its own popularity.

On 6 June, NSFs biology directorate shocked the scientific community by announcing it would no longer fund Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants (DDIGs). The small awards help support work, typically field studies or large-scale data analyses, by students pursuinggraduate degrees. The agency said managing the program had become too labor intensive and was making it harder for program officers to do other parts of their job.

Biologys decision to pull out of the long-running programthe funding mechanism remains in place for students in the social and behavioral scienceshas raised a hue and cry throughout the ecological community. This program generates one of the greater returns on investment of anything NSF does, says Casey Dunn, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. His 2003 DDIG laid the groundwork for research that, 8 years later, helped him win NSFs top award for young scientists, and he now encourages his students to apply. They may be small amounts of money, but they can have an extraordinary impact on someones career.

In a letter yesterday to directorate officials, the 10,000-member Ecological Society of America, based in Washington, D.C., asks the Arlington, Virginiabased NSF to preserve the dissertation grants within biology and offers to help it find ways to reduce high workloads and meet changing program priorities. The letter highlights the multiple benefits of the dissertation grants: They not only allow graduate students to go beyond their advisers research expertise, but they also teach them important career skills, including how to write a grant proposal and manage a budget.

Senior managers in the biology directorate said they terminated the program reluctantly, with the hope that it will ease a growing workload on program officers in the two divisionsenvironmental biology (DEB) and integrated organismal systems (IOS)now offering them. At roughly $20,000 each, dissertation awards are much smaller than bread-and-butter research grants, which average $230,000 a year across the entire directorate. But they require the same level of scrutiny by NSFs vaunted peer-review system, meaning program officers must put in the same effort in selecting reviewers, running panels, and processing the paperwork for every grant thats made. In the last 2 years DEB has handed out nearly the same number of DDIGsas full awards, roughly 130 a year in each category.

The time needed to manage the DDIGs has impinged on the other things program officers are expected to do, say NSF senior managers, including staying abreast of developments in their field, developing new research initiatives, and remaining active scientists. Something had to give, they concluded, and the ax fell on DDIGs. Nobody doubts the value of this program, but it was a necessity, says Heinz Gert de Couet, head of IOS.

Despite their budget of less than $3 million a year, the biology DDIGs have made a remarkable impression on the community over the decades they have been awarded. Hopi Hoekstra, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, says that applying for a DDIG is practically a rite of passage in her lab. Ive had nine students who have had them, says Hoekstra, who boasts that at one point her lab enjoyed a 100% success rate in nabbing the awards.

She, too, is a former recipient. As a graduate student, she recalls, she explored the evolution of sex chromosomes in mammals while her adviser worked with birds. Although both were doing population genetics, she says, My project was completely independent of his work. A DDIG gives students the freedom to chart their own scientific path, says Hoekstra, who studies the genetic basis of adaptation in wild mice and other vertebrates, and thats a big part of what makes doing science so much fun, right?

Dunn worries that ending the DDIG program could have a negative impact across the entire field of biology. Now, when a student says to their adviser, I want to do this new thing that youre not doing, they can apply for a DDIG, he says. Its a chance to explore all the nooks and crannies, and who knows what they might discover. Without the program, the acorn will have to stay closer to the tree.

NSFs directorate for the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences has run a nearly identical program for decades and administrators remain pleased with the results. We think its a very sound investment, says Thomas Baerwald, a senior science adviser within SBEs division of behavioral and cognitive sciences. It has allowed us to support high-quality work, and we see top-notch papers appearing soon after the students complete their dissertation. Baerwald says that hes made grants to four generations of scientists in the 29 years hes worked at NSF, which he regards as testament to their lasting value.

With a fiscal storm brewingthe 2018 budget submitted last month by President Donald Trump proposes an 11.3% cut to NSFsome scientists have speculated that the biology directorate is battening down the hatches. But senior managers say the presidents budget request played no part in their decision. In a word, its a workload issue, says Paula Mabee, head of DEB.

At the same time, they acknowledge that the additional work stems in part from insufficient resources. The number of proposals in DEB has doubled over the last 10 years, and theres been no growth in staffing for more than 20 years, Mabee notes. Weve done all the streamlining we can do without compromising the quality of merit review.

NSFs abrupt announcement has left the ecological community scrambling to find a way to address the workload problem without sacrificing the dissertation grants. Its important for us to recognize the constraints on NSF and then think about how to step up, Dunn says. Maybe this is an opportunity to think about new strategies for reviewing across NSF.

One idea being floated would have professional societies manage the DDIG peer review through a grant from NSF, which would continue funding the actual dissertation projects. Youd need some type of NSF support, plus the collaboration of several major societies to ensure there would be sufficient breadth of scientific expertise to review all the relevant proposals, says Dean Adams, executive vice president of the 670-member Society of Systematic Biologists.

Adams, a professor of theoretical ecology at Iowa State University in Ames who studies phenotype variation in salamanders, says the society is still reeling from this weeks NSF announcement, but that he expects its governing council to discuss ideas for responding later this month. The need to preserve the grants should be obvious, he says, calling them one of the most cost-effective ways for NSF to foster the next generation of ecologists.

But Adams worries that losing the NSF imprimatur could reduce their value. The grants might take a hit in terms of prestige, he says. Right now its a huge feather in their cap for a student to get a DDIG.

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Ecologists protest sudden end of NSF dissertation grants - Science Magazine

New report: Social, behavioral, and economic sciences contribute to advancing NSF mission – Phys.Org

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June 9, 2017

The social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences make significant contributions to the National Science Foundation's mission to advance health, prosperity and welfare, national defense, and progress in science, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. NSF should undertake a systematic and transparent strategic planning process that defines SBE research priorities, the required resources, and how success in addressing SBE priorities will be evaluated over time.

Although it is commendable that NSF consults with advisory groups and the broader scientific community to identify needs and opportunities in the SBE sciences, such as those outlined in its "Rebuilding the Mosaic" document, in the absence of a strategic plan, it is unclear how this input is combined and integrated in the agency's SBE research priorities.

"Nearly every major challenge the United States facesfrom alleviating unemployment to protecting itself from terrorismrequires understanding the causes and consequences of people's behavior," said Alan Leshner, chief executive officer emeritus, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and chair of the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report. "The diverse disciplines of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences produce fundamental knowledge and tools that provide a greater understanding of why people and societies respond the way they do, what they find important, and what they believe and valuewhich is critical for the country's well-being."

In addition, the understanding, tools, and methods provided by the SBE sciencesincluding research supported by the NSFprovide an essential foundation that helps other agencies achieve their missions, the report says. For example, NSF-supported research has provided valuable information about the patterns of behavior of hackers and the vulnerabilities of the nation's cyber networks. These analyses served as the foundation for the development of tools and applications that contribute to military capability in current conflicts and the prevention of future conflicts, as well as to efforts to combat terrorism, which are central to the missions of the U.S. Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The SBE sciences have also provided advances applicable to business and industry and enhanced the U.S. economy, the report says. For example, social science methods such as polling and forecasting are routinely used to inform consequential business decisions related to marketing, customer relations, and product development. In addition, the original version of the Google search engine resulted from a formula developed with NSF funding in the late 1990s. Researchers recognized that the decision to link pages to each other required conscious effort and the need to reflect human judgment about the significance of the link's destination, which led researchers to treat the collection of links as a network.

The NSF should continue to support the development of tools, methods, and research teams that can be used to advance the SBE sciences, facilitate interactions with other scientific fields, and help NSF and other agencies and organizations more effectively address important national needs. The report also includes recommendations for NSF to support training to prepare the next generation of scientists to be more data-intensive, interdisciplinary, and team-oriented, as well as to undertake more systematic efforts to communicate the results and value of the SBE research it supports and how NSF grants advance its mission.

The committee emphasized that it could not conduct an exhaustive review and analysis of all SBE research funded at the NSF in the time allotted, and as a result, the report does not claim that all SBE research serves the NSF mission or national needs.

Explore further: Federal agencies need to prepare for greater quantity, range of biotechnology products

Provided by: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

A profusion of biotechnology products is expected over the next five to 10 years, and the number and diversity of new products has the potential to overwhelm the U.S. regulatory system, says a new report from the National ...

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has made significant accomplishments to advance the science of global environmental change and improve the understanding of its impact on society through activities such as ...

Convergent research which crosses disciplinary boundaries, integrating tools and knowledge from the life sciences, physical sciences, engineering, and other fieldscould spur innovation and help tackle societal challenges, ...

The Mathematical Sciences in 2025, a new report from the National Research Council, finds that the mathematical sciences are an increasingly integral component of many disciplinesincluding biology, medicine, the social ...

Despite broad understanding of volcanoes, our ability to predict the timing, duration, type, size, and consequences of volcanic eruptions is limited, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and ...

As the nation discusses repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, the National Academy of Medicine today released a publication on crosscutting priorities that provides a succinct blueprint to address challenges to ...

(Phys.org)Online chemistry journal Synlett, which is published by Thieme, has tested the idea of intelligent crowd reviewing of scientific papers. The project was the brainchild of Benjamin List, a journal editor (and ...

(Phys.org)The transition from breastfeeding to a nonmilk diet is a developmental milestone, influencing future health and survival of mammals, including humans. Breast milk is highly beneficial to infants, conferring easily ...

Archaeologists have found that a 20-foot high mound in Slough, thought to be a Norman castle motte and for centuries the centrepiece of a bizarre Eton College ceremony, is actually a rare Saxon monument, built 1,500 years ...

Whales rely on a keen sense of hearing for their underwater existence. But whales show surprisingly vast differences in hearing ability. Baleen whales tune into infrasonic soundsat frequencies too low for humans to hearto ...

A giant temple to the Aztec god of the wind and a court where the Aztecs played a deadly ball game have been discovered in the heart of Mexico City.

An international research team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) and Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer of the National Institute for Archaeology and Heritage (INSAP, ...

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New report: Social, behavioral, and economic sciences contribute to advancing NSF mission - Phys.Org

Real Estate Weekly: Digital Realty Becomes A Cloud Computing Giant – Seeking Alpha

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Weekly Review

The REIT ETF indexes (VNQ and IYR) finished the week lower by 0.3% as the 10-year yield climbed 7bps following the UK elections. The S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) gained 0.3%. The homebuilder ETFs (XHB and ITB) were lower by 1.0% on the week. The commercial construction ETF (NYSEARCA:PKB) gained 0.2%.

(Hoya Capital Real Estate, Performance as of 12pm Friday)

Across other areas of the real estate sector, mortgage REITs (NYSEARCA:REM) finished the week higher by 0.5% and the international real estate ETF (NASDAQ:VNQI) declined 0.6%. The 10-Year Treasury yield (NYSEARCA:IEF) gained 7 bps on the week, recovering from YTD low yields earlier this week.

REITs are now higher by 0.8% YTD on a price-basis and higher by roughly 3% on a total-return basis. The sector divergences are quite significant: the Data Center sector has surged 24% while the retail-focused REITs have fallen double-digits. REITs ended 2016 with a total return of roughly 9%, lower than its 20-year average annual return of 12%.

REITWeek Recap

This week was NAREIT's annual REITWeek conference in New York City, the biggest industry conference of the year. We listened to about 25 presentations across all the major REIT sectors.

We came away with a slightly more positive outlook on the REIT sector as a whole. Retail REITs were unquestionably the major focus for many investors. The bifurcation between high-quality and low-quality retail space has intensified. High quality retail space in desirable locations continue to perform very well and, in many cases, the apparel downsizing has actually been a net positive as the vacated space has been put to more productive and higher-traffic uses. We detailed our judgments in "Short Squeeze May Send Mall REITs Surging."

We also published, "Obamacare Uncertainty Remains A Drag On Healthcare REITs," our update on the Healthcare REIT sector. We discussed that healthcare REITs have outperformed over the past quarter, but this outperformance is entirely attributable to plunging interest rates. Healthcare REITs are up 8% as the 10-year yield fell 45bps. Hospitals and skilled nursing REITs, the sub-sectors most exposed to changes in healthcare policy, continue to trade at substantial discounts as Obamacare crumbles and its replacement appears politically infeasible. While much of the media focus is on drug prices, labor costs are the true drivers of healthcare inflation. This is a structural allocation-of-resources issue within the American education system.

Finally, we also published our Net Lease update, "Retail Contagion Continues To Trouble Net Lease REITs" where we discussed that despite the significant decline in interest rates over the past quarter, net lease REITs have badly underperformed the broader REIT indexes, a worrying development for the sector. Net lease REITs are the most yield-sensitive REIT sector, but these REITs have not acted as bond-proxies so far this year. Investors have been rudely reminded of the significant retail exposures of these names. Credit issues with key tenants at Spirit Capital has dragged down the entire Net Lease sector. More than other REIT sectors, net lease REITs depend on their cost of capital advantage for acquisition-fueled growth. Spirit's credit issues may have meaningfully impaired the sector's competitive advantage.

Arguably the most significant piece of REIT news this week actually came after the conference, as Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR) announced a merger with DuPont Fabros (NYSE:DFT) to form a data center giant that appears more fortified to go head-to-head with the public cloud providers, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). While demand has continued to be robust and outstripping supply, pricing power has been a concern among investors as companies have increasingly utilized public cloud solutions rather than using their own server racks in the data center. In many cases, both the public and private cloud are both located in these REIT data centers, but the rent per megawatt is lower when, for example, Amazon is the tenant rather than an individual mid-sized company. We think consolidation is the right move. We will write a full report on it early next week.

The six best performing REITs on the week were Dupont Fabros , LaSalle Hotels (NYSE:LHO), Diamondrock (NYSE:DRH), Pebblebrook (NYSE:PEB), Sunstone (NYSE:SHO), and CoreSite (NYSE:COR).

The six worst performers on the week were Care Capital (NYSE:CCP), National Retail Properties (NYSE:NNN), Store Capital (NYSE:STOR), Realty Income (NYSE:O), Digital Realty , and CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE).

Economic Data

Every week, we like to dive deeper into the economic data that directly impacts real estate.

(Hoya Capital Real Estate, HousingWire)

Home Prices Continue To Rise As Mortgage Rates Continue To Fall

Core Logic's Home Price Index showed a 6.9% YoY rise in home prices in April, a slight deceleration from the 7.1% YoY rise in March."Mortgage rates in April dipped back to their lowest level since November of last year, spurring home-buying activity," said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. "In some metro areas, there has been a bidding frenzy as multiple contracts are placed on a single home. This has led home-price growth to outpace rent gains. Nationally, home prices were up 6.9 percent over the last year, while rent growth for single-family rental homes recorded a 3 percent rise through April, according to the CoreLogic Single-Family Rental Index."

Zillow's April Case-Shiller forecast sees a 5.6% rise in home prices for April. Home price appreciation has reaccelerated in recent months after showing signs of slowing in early 2017 as mortgage rates shot up nearly 100bps from the summer 2016 lows. All else equal, lower mortgage rates lead to higher home prices.

Bottom Line

REITs fell 0.3% on the week as the 10-year yield climbed 10 bps. Hotels and retail REITs were the best performers. This week was the annual REITWeek conference in NYC. We came away with a more positive outlook on the REIT sector as a whole, especially the higher quality retail space.

Apartments and hotels have been upside surprises this year and have defied the headwinds from higher supply. Demand has been robust in both sectors and has largely offset higher supply. Digital Realty will merge with DuPont Fabros to form the largest data center REIT. Consolidation will allow these REITs to command better pricing power with the public cloud providers.

Please add your comments if you have additional insight or opinions. We encourage readers to follow our Seeking Alpha page (click "Follow" at the top) to continue to stay up to date on our REIT rankings, weekly recaps, and analysis on the REIT and broader real estate sector.

Disclosure: I am/we are long VNQ, SPY, CCP, COR, DLR, CUBE, SHO.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: All of our research is for educational purpose only, always provided free of charge exclusively on Seeking Alpha. Recommendations and commentary are purely theoretical and not intended as investment advice. Information presented is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. For investment advice, consult your financial advisor.

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Real Estate Weekly: Digital Realty Becomes A Cloud Computing Giant - Seeking Alpha

Edge Computing Is New Cloud Computing Tech Investors Should Track – GuruFocus.com

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The cloud computing industry is still in its early stages of adoption. In 2016, the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) segment recorded just $22 billion in annual revenues. Considering the hundreds of billions dollars the IT industry spends every year, it is very clear that IaaS still has a long way to go.

The Software as a Service segment is a bit older, but the model has now become the preferred method for software delivery. Microsoft has done an excellent job of ditching its old annual licensing model for SaaS, and the success of Office 365, their lead SaaS product, is ample validation of that. Oracle is targeting $10 billion in annual revenues from SaaS over the next few years.

With these and thousands of other companies in the fray, the SaaS segment is expected to continue its double-digit growth over the next several years.

The cloud software market reached $48.8 billion in revenue in 2014, representing a 24.4% year-over-year growth rate. IDC expects cloud software will grow to surpass $112.8 billion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3%. SaaS delivery will significantly outpace traditional software product delivery, growing nearly five times faster than the traditional software market and becoming a significant growth driver to all functional software markets. By 2019, the cloud software model will account for $1 of every $4.59 spent on software.IDC

As businesses around the world slowly started warming up to the idea of third party-managed infrastructure services (IaaS) and software products delivered over the cloud (SaaS), the segment has piqued the interests of all the major tech players. Early entrants Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) have already crossed $13 billion in trailing 12-month revenues while IBM has, so far, kept pace. Google is still working toward getting its bona fides in the cloud game by building datacenters and increasing features and services while Oracle is slowly working on its IaaS portfolio as well.

But Amazon and Microsoft, the lead players in the cloud story, have now made it clear that they are already on their way to embracing the next level of cloud. Microsofts CEO Satya Nadella made a huge announcement during the recent Microsoft Build 2017 developer conference that the companys cloud strategy is moving toward edge computing:

It has been barely four years since Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the companys Mobile First, Cloud First strategy. Instead of basking in the glory of newfound success in Cloud, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has now announced that the time has to come to move on from a Mobile First, Cloud First strategy toward a more cloud-focused Intelligent Cloud, Intelligent Edge strategy.1reddrop

Amazon made its edge computing/IoT-focused software, Amazon Greengrass, publicly available Thursday, making it loud and clear that they, too, are in the race to move computing closer to the edge.

But most investors in the stock market have barely begun to discover cloud computing so heres a little primer on the new wave of cloud computing.

What is edge computing?

In cloud computing, the processing power is always centralized. Data has to travel from a device to servers, where it gets processed; the output is then pushed back to the device. Edge computing moves these heavy processing tasks or as many of them as possible closer to the point of origin, hence the word "edge."

This reduces the time data needs to travel, thereby reducing latency and cutting reliance on internet connections. It results in improved reliability and faster, more reliable decision making at the edge.

Among its application areas are artificial intelligence, or AI, where it It completely transforms the way AI can be applied to various scenarios.

Thats probably an oversimplified description of edge computing, but its enough at this point to understand that the "edge" part of the equation takes the "computing" part of cloud computing away from massive data centers and brings it closer to the connected devices themselves.

There are several obvious advantages to adopting an edge computing model over a traditional cloud computing one, but the segment itself is in very early stages of its development. Edge computing also needs a robust IoT and AI device ecosystem to make its impact felt in full force. By moving in early on this new paradigm in cloud computing, Amazon and Microsoft, the top two cloud companies, have once again moved the cloud goal posts and significantly raised the bar.

Their competitors now have to take the risk to invest sufficient resources, time and money if they want to keep Amazon and Microsoft in check. Considering the fact that Google and Oracle are only now starting on the cloud computing segment itself, it is going to be an extremely difficult task to execute to keep expanding their cloud offerings while also working on edge computing and IoT technologies.

By putting a clear moat around their businesses, Amazon and Microsoft are further differentiating themselves from the now-crowded cloud computing space. Microsoft is even going so far as to redefine its very vision for the future of cloud computing and the direction that the companys cloud push is going to take.

Why do investors need to know this? Because these are the moves that will take Microsoft and Amazon from their annual cloud revenues of $13 billion to twice, thrice that and beyond. Its not something of which a serious tech investor can afford to be unaware.

Disclosure: I have no positions in the stock mentioned above and no intention to initiate a position in the next 72 hours.

Sangara Narayanan

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Edge Computing Is New Cloud Computing Tech Investors Should Track - GuruFocus.com

The benefits of cloud computing, Rust 1.18, and intelligent tracking prevention in WebKit SD Times news digest … – SDTimes.com

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The cloud is no longer an afterthought, it is a competitive advantage. According to a new Insight-sponsored report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, businesses are turning to the cloud for agility, data capabilities, customer and user experiences as well as cost savings.

A companys IT environment should work for them by enabling them to both run and innovate. Large and small to mid-sized companies need to focus on managing and modernizing their IT infrastructure, so that it becomes a transformative part of their business that can directly improve results, said David Lewerke, Director, hybrid cloud consulting practice at Insight. While we knew there were a number of benefits, we wanted to better understand from respondents exactly how cloud systems were impacting their business outcomes.

The report found 42% use a hybrid cloud approach, 40% host their systems in a private cloud, and 13% host in a public cloud. Other benefits of cloud adoption included time to market, ability to manage security, and the ability to mitigate risk.

Rust 1.18 releasedThe latest version of the systems programing language Rust has been released with new improvements, cleanups and features. The biggest changes in Rust 1.18 includes an update to the latest edition of The Rust Programming Language book. The book is being written in the open on GitHub. Version 1.18 features the first draft of the second edition, as well as 19 out of 20 draft chapters.

Other features include an expansion of the pub keyword, library stabilizations, and cargo features.

More information is available here.

WebKits intelligent tracking prevention featureWebKit, an open source web browser engine, is providing a new feature called cross-site tracking. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature limits cookies and other website data to help users feel they can trust the privacy-sensitive data about their web activity again.

The success of the web as a platform relies on user trust. Many users feel that trust is broken when they are being tracked and privacy-sensitive data about their web activity is acquired for purposes that they never agreed to, John Wilander, security engineer for WebKit, wrote in a post.

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The benefits of cloud computing, Rust 1.18, and intelligent tracking prevention in WebKit SD Times news digest ... - SDTimes.com

Growing Patent Claim Risks in Cloud Computing – Lexology (registration)

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This blog develops the themes of our February piece on cloud availability risks from software patent claims. It shows how the patent cloudscape is changing; how PAEs are increasingly active in Europe as well as in the USA; and how CSPs are starting to respond in their contract terms.

With increasingly recognised benefits of security, flexibility and reliability, cloud computing continues to carry all before it. Its aggregation of massive processing power also heralds deep, connected and transformative innovation in our daily lives. Intellectual property (IP) is at the centre of this wave of innovation, and an increasingly fierce battleground as the current high profile dispute between Alphabets Waymo and Uber over core autonomous vehicle technology shows.[1]

You might think that the cloud, built and running on shared environments and public standards, would be a safe space from intrusive IP disputes. But the evidence is mounting that the cloud is proving attractive for PAEs (Patent Assertion Entities, businesses who litigate their patents but generally dont otherwise use their patented technology). And whilst cloud users are increasingly aware of the importance of security and privacy, cloud IP risks are now equally important but still somewhat overlooked: many enterprises dont yet have complete clarity on their IP litigation strategy or IP innovation strategy, especially in a global context.

There are persuasive reasons for cloud customers to focus more on patent risks. PwC, in its most recent (May 2017) Patent Litigation Study[2] notes that damages awards for PAEs are almost four times greater than for other patent claimants and that damages awards at trial in patent disputes continue to rise.

Europe is quickly becoming a key jurisdiction for patent enforcement: the European Patent Office granted 96,000 patents in 2016, [3] up 40% from 2015, and the Unitary Patent along with EU-wide injunctions will soon be a reality.[4]

The cloud computing patent landscape is also developing rapidly. Cloud patent families are well-known in areas such file-storage and protocols but other areas like Fintech[5] are also growing quickly.

PAEs are acquiring cloud computing patents at a rapid pace according to IPlytics, an IP intelligence provider,[6] who note that:

PAEs often acquire patents in technological areas that will likely become strategically important for future markets.

This is borne out in a European Commission report on PAEs in Europe[7] which (on page 26) cites findings that:[8]

PAEs are overwhelmingly involved in the litigation of German and UK patents related to computer and telecommunications technology [and that] these findings are consistent with existing evidence on the activity of US PAEs, which also tend to enforce high-tech patents at a disproportionately high frequency, especially software patents.

Part of the attraction for PAEs is that patent infringement is increasingly easy to detect in the cloud: detailed documentation, APIs and the code for open source (the software that powers much of the cloud) are readily available, and can be read and analysed by anyone, making the cloud a soft target.

As the economic importance of the cloud rises, cloud customers make increasingly interesting targets for PAEs: customers generally dont have the same level of expertise in cloud tech as cloud service providers (CSPs), have a greater incentive to settle, are less prepared to fight an IP battle, and have little incentive to solve an IP Issue for others. Contrast this with the position of the CSP, who will want to avoid an IP threat becoming an issue across its customer base.

A measure of this growing cloud patent claim risk is the evolving approach of the largest global CSPs to this issue in their cloud service agreements.

Microsoft has taken an early lead through its recently announced Azure IP Advantage[9] programme with uncapped indemnification for its Azure cloud services, including open source incorporated in its services, and 10,000 (7,500 currently, 2,500 to come) patents that Microsoft is sharing with its consuming customers.

Google in its Cloud Platform Terms of Service[10] seeks (at section 14.2) to exclude open source software entirely from its IP infringement indemnification a big carve-out given the importance of open source in the cloud environment.

In Amazon Web Services (AWS) Customer Agreement,[11] the effect of section 10 is that AWS does not offer in its standard terms any IP protection at all for its services. Section 8.5 is an unusual IP non-assert term that requires the customer not itself or through others to assert any IP claim regarding the AWS services it has used. The clause continues without limit in time after the agreement has ended; and to the extent it could be said to amount to a patent no-challenge clause, could be problematic in Europe under EU competition law, for example.

The fact that all the largest CSPs are starting to address cloud patent risk expressly in their contract terms is perhaps the most compelling evidence that this PAE-fuelled risk is becoming increasingly relevant and material. Cloud customers, and their regulators in regulated sectors, should take note as well.

Continued here:

Growing Patent Claim Risks in Cloud Computing - Lexology (registration)

New Cloud Computing and IT Outsourcing Requirements in the Financial Sector – Lexology (registration)

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On 17 May, 2017 the Luxembourg Financial Regulator (CSSF) published four new circulars concerning cloud computing and IT outsourcing. The new regulations will immediately affect credit institutions, professionals of the financial sector, payment service providers, and electronic money issuers (Entities). The four CSSF circulars, which came into effect on the date of their publication, introduce new rules and replace existing requirements set out in existing circulars.

Main novelties and amendments

Circular 17/654

This circular addresses the obligations that Entities must meet when their IT infrastructure uses or will rely on a cloud computing infrastructure.

The circular applies to the partial or full transfer of the activities and does not make many differences between an external provider and an internal provider within a group of companies.

The CSSF defines the term of material activity as any activity that, when not properly performed, reduces the ability of an Entity to meet regulatory requirements or continue its operations, and any activities that are necessary for the sound and prudent risk management.

Three different IT service models are described:

For each of the above service models, the CSSF provides an interpretation of the levels of control on the systems and the software that an Entity must respect when applying such model.

Within these service models the CSSF differentiates four different cloud types:

An Entitys outsourcing of IT matters will qualify for particular regulatory treatment, if it meets specific criteria set out by the CSSF and will be excluded from the scope of other existing regulations relating the Entitys central administration, accounting organization, internal governance and risk management (e.g. Circulars 12/552 or 17/656).

The criteria that the CSSF uses to define the specific regulatory treatment are:

If the above criteria are fulfilled an Entity must obtain the CSSFs prior approval (if a material activity is concerned). In case a Luxembourg based professional of the financial sector is used, an Entity must only file a prior notification to the CSSF.

Once the outsourcing is implemented, all the changes to the set-up and the service providers as well as the in-sourcing must be notified to the regulator before an Entity enacts them.

Entities under the supervision of the CSSF that would like to offer cloud computing services or related operating services to their clients must submit a program description to the CSSF to obtain its prior approval.

This circular amends the requirements applicable to credit institutions, investment firms and professional lenders. The amendments introduce Circular 17/654 and clarify that Circular 05/178 is repealed.

In addition, the amendments clarify that every time specific infrastructures are used or changed, authorized entities must observe data protection and professional secrecy rules.

The circular clarifies the conditions for the use of other group entities that are not authorized by the CSSF. The systems of such group entities may be used under the condition that no confidential information is stored in a readable manner on those systems. If this is the case, the supervised entity must inform its clients and, if required, collect their consent.

This circular aligns the IT outsourcing requirements for professionals of the financial sector other than investment firms, payment service providers and electronic money issuers to those applicable to credit institutions and investment firms. It copies the wording of the relevant sections of Circular 12/552 to ensure consistency and ease further alignments.

Finally, the circular introduces Circular 17/564 and clarifies that professionals of the financial sector that offer IT services to their clients, may use the infrastructure of a third party or sub-delegate a part of their services only with the prior consent of the concerned clients.

This circular amends Circular 06/240 and is applicable to all credit institutions and professionals of the financial sector. One important clarification of this circular consists of providing that only the production environment should contain confidential data, whereas the test and development environment(s) (that as per applicable regulation may be accessed by third parties) should not contain confidential data.

Future developments

As the four circulars came into effect on the date of their publication, the Entities auditors are expected to pay particular attention to the new requirements when carrying out their audits.

Entities supervised by the CSSF will have to carefully study the new circulars and analyze the impact on their existing administrative organization and IT infrastructure, because if affected, they must be aligned to the new requirements. Therefore, changes may need to be implemented at multiple levels:

As service providers located outside of Luxembourg will be required to accept contractual provisions that they have never been requested to comply with before, (for instance, amendments to certifications and controls), the time to implement the changes should not be underestimated.

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New Cloud Computing and IT Outsourcing Requirements in the Financial Sector - Lexology (registration)

Purdue, Microsoft to Collaborate on Quantum Computer – Photonics.com

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Photonics.com Jun 2017 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., June 9, 2017 Purdue University and Microsoft Corp. have signed a five-year agreement to develop a useable quantum computer.

Purdue is one of four international universities in the collaboration. Michael Manfra, Purdue University's Bill and Dee O'Brien Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy, professor of materials engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering, will lead the effort at Purdue to build by producing a "topological qubit."

"Someday, quantum computing will move from the laboratory to actual daily use, and when it does, it will signal another explosion of computing power like that brought about by the silicon chip," said Michael Daniels, president of Purdue. "Its thrilling to imagine Purdue at the center of this next leap forward.

With quantum computers, information is encoded in qubits, which are quantum units of information. With a qubit, however, this physical state isn't just 0 or 1, but can also be a linear combination of 0 and 1. Because of the quantum mechanic phenomenon of "superposition," a qubit can be in both states at the same time. This characteristic is essential to quantum computations potential power, allowing for solutions to problems that are intractable using classical architectures.

The team assembled by Microsoft will work on a type of quantum computer that is expected to be especially robust against interference from its surroundings, a situation known in quantum computing as decoherence. The scalable topological quantum computer is theoretically more stable and less error-prone.

Purdue and Microsoft entered into an agreement in April 2016 that extends their collaboration on quantum computing research, effectively establishing "Station Q Purdue," one of the Station Q experimental research sites that work closely with two Station Q theory sites. This new, multi-year agreement extends that collaboration and includes Microsoft employees being embedded in Manfra's research team at Purdue.

Manfras group at Station Q Purdue will collaborate with Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft team members, as well as a global experimental group established by Microsoft including experimental groups at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, TU Delft in the Netherlands and the University of Sydney, Australia. They are also coupled to the theorists at Microsoft Station Q in Santa Barbara. All groups are working together to solve quantum computings biggest challenges.

"What's exciting is that we're doing the science and engineering hand in hand, at the same time," Manfra says. We are lucky to be part of this truly amazing global team.

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Purdue, Microsoft to Collaborate on Quantum Computer - Photonics.com

Scientists May Have Found a Way to Combat Quantum Computer Blockchain Hacking – Futurism

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In Brief While quantum computers could improve the world by decreasing processing times, they could also be the ideal tool for hackers, which is a true threat to the success of blockchain. Russian scientists, though, may have found the solution. Russias Solution to Quantum Hacking

A serious concern in the computing industry is that when true quantum computers are produced, the principles of encryption will break down due to the dizzyingly superior processing power.

Although blockchain is a far more secure method of transaction than our current financial system, even it will become vulnerable to a brute force attack by a quantum computer. Andersen Cheng, co-founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Post Quantum, told Newsweek, Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.

A team lead by Evgeny Kiktenko at the Russian Quantum Center in Moscow, though, may have found a way to protect blockchains by fighting fire with fire using quantum mechanics. They are designing a quantum-secured blockchain where each block, hypothetically, is signed by a quantum key rather than a digital one.

They propose that transmitting and encrypting information using quantum particles such as photons, which cannot be copied or meddled with without the particles being destroyed, ensures the blockchains safety. The principle is based on Zero-knowledge proofs which allow you to validate information without sharing it.

In recent months Russia has become increasingly interested in blockchain. The central bank is composing new laws focused on cryptocurrencies and is interested in developing one of its own. This research marks a step forward in these efforts because it concerns the protection of such systems.

If the quantum-secured blockchain proves successful it would be hugely beneficial to the rest of the world as well. Blockchain has the potential to do a lot of good for the world by streamlining the transaction system, making it more secure, and ensuring transparency like never before. Countries such as Senegal have developed currencies that are entirely digital, Japan is accepting bitcoin (which uses blockchain) as legal tender in 260,000 stores this summer, and Ukraine is considering using it to combat corruption.

If the advent of quantum computing could be the apocalypse for blockchain, it is therefore crucially important that we begin thinking about how to protect these system before entire countries and currencies could be subject to hacks from the abusers of quantum computers.

Link:

Scientists May Have Found a Way to Combat Quantum Computer Blockchain Hacking - Futurism

So is Donald Trump secretly recording conversations or not? – CNN

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Like many of Trump's tweets, this one immediately came to dominate the political conversation. Did he actually have a secret recording system in the White House? If not, why say it?

And, like many of Trump's tweets, it produced a chain reaction of events that backfired on Trump. The threat -- I guess that's the best way to describe what Trump did -- of the existence of recordings spurred Comey to pass along memos he had written detailing his conversations with Trump to a friend, with the express goal of them being leaked and, hopefully, triggering a special counsel to be appointed.

But, now, there's even more to the Trump tweet on "tapes" of his Comey conversations. Why? Because we have Comey and Trump saying absolutely contradictory things about the nature of those meetings and phone calls.

The easiest way to make this something other than a "he said, he said" situation is for Trump to authorize the release of any and all recorded conversations with Comey -- if, of course, they exist.

"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey said in his testimony before the Senate intelligence committee Thursday. At another point, he added: "The President surely knows if there are tapes. If there are, my feelings aren't hurt. Release the tapes."

All of which makes the White House response to the question of whether a recording system exists all the more troubling. Asked Thursday about the possibility, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had "no idea" if there was a taping system in the White House. When a reporter questioned whether Sanders could find out the answer to that question, she joked: "Sure, I'll try to look under the couches."

That response is broadly consistent with how the White House has played this story since Trump's initial tweet. "The President has nothing further to add on that," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said about the possibility of a taping system in the immediate aftermath of Trump's tweet.

And Trump himself hasn't shed any more light on the tweet, either.

Given Comey's testimony -- under oath -- that stone-walling strategy is no longer sustainable. At least one person in the White House -- HINT: His initial are DJT -- knows whether or not the President has been secretly taping phone calls and meetings.

If such tapes exist, they need to be heard by both the congressional committees looking into Russia's meddling into the 2016 election and by Mueller's investigators. They are the one thing that could provide definitive evidence of whether Trump or Comey is telling the truth about their interactions.

If the tapes don't exist, we need to know that, too.

Past is usually prologue. If so, Trump and his senior staff will bunker down on the issue -- simply refusing to say anything either way about the existence of a recording system. At which point the ball will be in the hands of Congress and Mueller to get the tapes -- if any tapes actually exist.

The Trump tweet on "tapes" is now a central part of the investigation into what exactly happened between he and Comey. And that's not going to change until we get a clear answer on whether they actually exist -- and, if they do, what's on them.

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So is Donald Trump secretly recording conversations or not? - CNN

9 questions Donald Trump needs to answer at today’s news conference – CNN

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Typically in these sorts of joint pressers, the American media gets two questions and the foreign press gets two questions. But I've got a lot more than just two questions that Trump really needs to answer.

Below are the 9 questions Trump could -- and should -- be asked this afternoon.

1. "Did you record anything? Are there tapes?"

Given that he and Comey, who was under oath, are now painting very different pictures of their interactions, Trump simply refusing to answer questions about a secret taping system isn't really an option.

2. "Do you regret that May 12 'tapes' tweet? Or any tweet you have sent?"

3. "Do you have confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions?"

4. "Do you believe in global warming?"

5. "You responded 'no' when asked if you asked Comey to end the Flynn investigation. Did you say you 'hoped' he could end it? And is there a difference?"

The Trump White House -- and Republican elected officials who continue, generally speaking, to stand by the President -- are pinning a whole lot on the fact that Trump said he "hoped" Comey would find a way to end the investigation into the former national security adviser. Here's Idaho Sen. Jim Risch making that point in his questioning of Comey on Thursday: "(Trump) said, I hope ... Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?" Comey responded that regardless of the words Trump used that it was clear his intention was to ask for the investigation to be closed. Why doesn't Trump agree?

6. "British Prime Minister Theresa May has been one of your staunchest foreign defenders. In the final days of the UK election, you became an issue for her due to your comments about the London attacks. What message do you take from May's setback?"

7. "When you praised Saudi Arabia for severing all ties to Qatar due to allegations that the country finances terrorism, were you aware that Qatar also houses the largest US base in the region?

8. "Speaker Paul Ryan defended your meetings with Comey by saying, 'he's new to this.' Is Speaker Ryan accurate in that assessment?"

9. "You and your attorney, Marc Kasowitz, said that Comey falsely testified under oath about his conversations with you. Will you testify under oath about your conversations with Mr Comey?"

It's one thing to accuse someone else of lying. It's another to accuse them of lying under oath, which is what Trump and Kasowitz have done. Lying under oath means you could wind up in jail. Remember, too, that Trump and Comey are not playing by the same rules. Comey has testified under oath about his meetings and interactions with Trump. Trump has not done the same in regards those same meetings.

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9 questions Donald Trump needs to answer at today's news conference - CNN

The Real Scandal Is Still Russia – Slate Magazine

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Rep. Elijah Cummings walks past a photograph of President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on May 17 in Washington, D.C.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Confronted by the glare of Thursdays dazzling Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, we all focused on the bright shiny object that was and is former FBI Director James Comey. His dramatic testimony struck more than one observer as part recitation, part theatrical performance. In todays political discourse, good television counts almost as much as good substance, all but guaranteeing Comeys eclipse of everything else in the Washington universe.

However, for all of the revelations in Thursdays hearing, it failed to shine light on the most important set of questions relating to Russian activities and the extent to which Russia has degraded U.S. national security through its espionage, influence, and cyberwarfare campaigns over the past two years. Even while Comey performed before the Senate, Russias schemes continued to unfold, undermining U.S. national security in myriad ways and places around the world. It may be the case that Trump lied; it may even be the case that he criminally obstructed justice and should be impeached. And yet we cannot let those important political questions consume all our attention, lest Russia do more harm while we are distracted.

Laffaire Russe began during the 2016 election campaign with investigations into alleged ties between Trump campaign officials, Ukraine separatists, and potentially the Russian government. These investigations focused on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and policy adviser Carter Page, as well as their commercial affiliates.

Any one of these encounters would raise serious questions about the intent of the meeting, and its outcomes, whether a private deal or foreign policy quid pro quo.

Since then, we have learned of a series of high-level meetings between close Trump associates and the Russian government. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on three separate occasions during the campaign and transition. Deposed Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met and talked repeatedly with senior Russian officials and also worked for myriad foreign interests during the campaign, actions that have now put him in considerable legal jeopardy. Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner also met with senior Russian officials during this period, as well as prominent Russian bankers connected to Vladimir Putin and known for being agents of Russian influence abroad. Kushner reportedly went a step further, seeking to hide these communications at the time from U.S. intelligence agencies by asking to use Russian diplomatic facilities and secure communications channels. Of course, on the day after firing Comey, Trump met personally with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office, reportedly revealing highly classified intelligence to the Russians regarding ISIS and the situation in Syria.

Any one of these encounters would raise serious questions about the intent of the meeting, and its outcomes, whether a private deal or foreign policy quid pro quo. Together, they signal something much more significant: a deliberate change of U.S. policy toward Russia, with these meetings serving as public acts of consummation for the new relationship between the two countries.

Judging by Russias string of foreign policy triumphs since last November, Putin appears to have the upper hand in his new relationship with Trump and the U.S. Since the election, Trump feuded with his own security agencies, which he and his advisers alternately accused of acting as a deep state to oppose Trumps agenda and orchestrating leaks to humiliate and undermine Trump personally. Trumps ill-considered wordsincluding his obstinate refusal to affirm Americas commitment to collective self-defenseand amateurish diplomacy have sprained the NATO alliance, with the possibly of a fracture growing by the day. White House discussions of Afghanistan, Syria, and other national security subjects have stalled as Trump has been consumed by other priorities, including responding to self-inflicted crises like the Comey firing. Trumps nine-day foreign trip made for a few good television moments like his sword dance in Saudi Arabiabut appears to have left a trail of wreckage, including a massive dispute between the Gulf states and statements by European leaders and erstwhile allies that they could no longer rely on the U.S. and must instead fight for our own future and our fate ourselves as Europeans. And, in perhaps the most clear quid pro quos reported yet, Trump officials allegedly pushed in the earliest days of his administration to roll back sanctions on Russiasanctions imposed over the Russian intervention in Ukraine and Russias meddling in the 2016 election.

No one of these triumphs resulted directly from Putin pushing a button and having Trump act. They reflect a more subtle success, borne of Russian influence upstream in the Washington ecosystem. Russian intelligence agencies successfully interfered with and influenced the U.S. election, according to a consensus position of the U.S. intelligence community. By subtly influencing the election outcome, cultivating relationships with top Trump officials, and creating distrust of core U.S. national security institutions like the CIAincluding among the president himselfRussia set in motion a complex chain reaction that is now paying off for the Russian regime. Whether they actively colluded with the Trump campaign or not, the Russians got what they wanted: a president who was more friendly to their interests, and more pliable in their hands too.

Leaders have used spectacle for centuries to entertain and distract their people. As a reality television star who used spectacle to rebrand himself and seize the presidency, Trump understands that power. Trump wins by refocusing public attention on Comey and his status as a leaker and reframing laffaire Russe as laffaire Comey. This public relations campaign against Comey may be shortsighted if and when the president comes under legal scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller. But for now, every day the media cycle churns over Comeys leaks is a day the public debate isnt focusing on Trumps substantive actionsor failuresat home and abroad. This provides the cover Trump needs to continue his deconstruction of the administrative state and the darkness he needs to avoid scrutiny for his blunders too.

Top Comment

I think it's time to admit Reagan didn't win the Cold War. The autocratic dictator-for-life of Russia is a former KGB agent. Our one arguable win? We changed their economic system from a Communist-ish kleptocracy to a Capitalist-ish kleptocracy. Yah! More...

Trumps responseand the response of his longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitzillustrates how well Trump is playing this drama for his advantage. As the special counsels inquiry unfolds and reaches into the White House, touching close associates and family members, Trump understands the risk. As his agenda stalls, approval ratings sink, and his administration swirls in turmoil, Trump must know by this point he needs to act lest his presidency sink into the swamp. Although the possibility of impeachment for obstruction of justice looms, Trump appears to discount this threat. He probably doesnt believe Speaker Paul Ryan would bring impeachment proceedings, let alone that Republicans would actually vote to remove him from office. And so a spectacle over alleged obstruction of justiceincluding direct comparisons of Trumps word with that of Comeyis preferable to a spectacle over Trumps myriad policy and governance failures. Just as he did on the campaign, quite successfully, Trump is using spectacle to distract the masses and divert attention from substance.

For members of Congress, and the rest of us, the only way to win is not to play Trumps game; to remain focused on the broader threats posed to U.S. national security, rather than the narrow, petty political intrigues peddled by Trump and his henchmen. If Comey is telling an accurate story, then Trump likely acted to obstruct a Justice Department criminal investigation into Michael Flynn and possibly a broader inquiry into the Trump administrations Russia ties too. That in and of itself is a huge matter. But it is dwarfed by the national security significance of the Russia ties themselves and the broader damage caused so far by the Russian government and its proxies. We cannot afford the luxury of being entertained by Trumps spectacle while our national security crumbles in the background.

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The Real Scandal Is Still Russia - Slate Magazine

5 times UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed Donald Trump – Politico

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Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn hasnt minced words when it comes to his views of President Donald Trump and his policies. | Getty

With U.K. election results showing a rocky road ahead for Prime Minister Theresa May, President Donald Trump may soon have to forge a closer relationship with a British politician who has repeatedly criticized him: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

An election exit poll Thursday night, released as polls closed, projected that May would lose her majority in parliament. Final results are expected Friday morning.

Story Continued Below

The hard-left Labour leader hasnt minced words when it comes to his views of the president and his policies. Here are five not-so-nice things Corbyn has said about Trump:

1. An "erratic" administration

While campaigning last month, Corbyn said this of the months-old Trump administration: The U.S. is the strongest military power on the planet by a very long way. It has a special responsibility to use its power with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts collectively and peacefully. Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isnt strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability.

2. Fake anti-elitism

Not long after the 2016 election was settled, Corbyn jabbed both UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Trump as rich, white men who practiced fake anti-elitism. The fake anti-elitism of rich, white men, like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, is farcical at one level but in reality its no joke at all, Corbyn said in a speech in November.

3. Neither the grace nor the sense to grasp communities' response to terror

Breaking his silence on last weeks London terror attacks that killed seven and injured dozens more, Corbyn both criticized Mays policies and Trumps Twitter response.

At this time it is more important than ever that we stay united in our communities. It is the strength of our communities that gets us through these awful times as London Mayor Sadiq Khan recognized, but which the current occupant in the White House has neither the grace nor the sense to grasp, Corbyn said.

4. Sorry, mate, youre wrong

Corbyn said if he were prime minister, his message to Trump on climate change would be simple: "youre wrong," BuzzFeed reported. Speaking at an election rally, Corbyn said: A Labour government wouldnt hesitate to ring up and write to Donald Trump to say, 'Sorry, mate, youre wrong stand by the Paris agreement.'"

5. Donald Trump should not be coming to the U.K.

In February, Corbyn said Donald Trump should not be coming to the U.K. Citing the presidents plan to build a wall along the U.S. southern border, among other things, Corbyn said Britains government should be challenging Trump on international law issues and we should also not be rolling the red carpet out. Trump is reportedly visiting the U.K. later this year.

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5 times UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed Donald Trump - Politico

Karl Rove, Erick Erickson slam Donald Trump – Salon

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Even before former FBI Director James Comey accused President Donald Trump of lying during his testimonybefore the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday,one prominent Republican had already come forward that he doubted Trumps fitness to be president.

That man was Karl Rove, the former top adviser to President George W. Bush.

On Wednesday, Rove wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal,arguing that Trump may have mastered the modes of communication, but not the substance, thereby sabotaging his own agenda. The former GOP wunderkindclaims that Trump lacks the focus or self-discipline to do the basic work required of a president and argued that his chronic impulsiveness is apparently unstoppable and clearly self-defeating. He specifically cited Trumps tweets about his proposed travel ban against six Muslim-majority countries, observing how the presidents use of the phrase travel ban undermined his legal case. He added that various self-contradicting tweets suggests the president is disregarding basic fact checking and exacerbates the already considerable doubts Americans have about his competence and trustworthiness.

Rove also denounced Trumps language when pulling America out of the Paris climate accord, saying that instead of questioning the motives of international partners he should have instead heralded Americas success in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

While Roves editorial occurred before the Comey testimony, it touched on themes that were remarkably similar to those broached by another right-wing pundit, Erick Erickson, in his analysis of that eventafter it happened.

Although Erickson opens by saying that he doesnt believe Donald Trump obstructed justice, he added that we . . .know President Trump lies regularly.

As a result, when it comes to the question of whether Trump is lying about asking Comey to shut down the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Erickson wrote he believedthat the public will latch on to Comey as the honest broker because Comey was willing to criticize both Democrats and Republicans. As Erickson concluded, the president only won because he convinced 70,000 people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that he was not as bad as Clinton, Erickson is concerned that if there are at least 70,001 voters who will take Comeys word over Trumps, the Republican Party will be in big trouble.

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Karl Rove, Erick Erickson slam Donald Trump - Salon