Mayor Bill de Blasio Appoints Commissioners to Protect New Yorkers’ Health and Safety – Video

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Mayor Bill de Blasio Appoints Commissioners to Protect New Yorkers #39; Health and Safety
Dr. Mary Bassett to Lead Health Department, Rose Pierre-Louis to Lead Mayor #39;s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. Read the entire press release here: http://...

By: NYC Mayor #39;s Office

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Mayor Bill de Blasio Appoints Commissioners to Protect New Yorkers' Health and Safety - Video

Health care website passes recent security examination

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WASHINGTON (AP) Cybersecurity concerns over President Barack Obamas health care website have been cleared up through testing, a government security professional who initially had qualms about the system assured lawmakers Thursday.

But a congressional hearing featuring three senior technology experts from within the Health and Human Services Department also revealed a broader internal debate before the hapless launch of HealthCare.gov last fall.

One of the witnesses, HHS Chief Information Officer Frank Baitman, said he personally brought security issues to the attention of the departments second-in-command, Bill Corr, as well as another senior official. Its unclear what, if anything, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House officials were told.

The maddening technical problems that frustrated consumers for weeks as they tried to sign up for health insurance would pale in comparison if a serious security breach compromised the names, Social Security numbers, incomes and other personal information of millions of Americans.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are trying to build a case that the administration recklessly ignored security concerns to meet a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline for flipping the switch. The administration and Democratic lawmakers say all issues were addressed through special vigilance instituted just before the launch. While Republicans have raised questions, they have yet to find a smoking gun.

Officials told the committee no attempted attack by hackers has succeeded, although a shadowy group calling itself Destroy Obamacare has tried. There have been 13 known inadvertent exposures or disclosures of information.

The root of the controversy is that the health care site did not get full security testing, as is the usual practice with federal systems before they are put into use. The technology was getting constant tweaks that precluded a final assessment. It also was prone to crashing.

However, Medicares top cybersecurity official testified Thursday that the revamped website passed full security tests Dec. 18, easing her earlier concerns about vulnerabilities. Teresa Fryer, chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had initially balked at the site going live.

She said Thursday she would now recommend full operational and security certification for the site, which currently has what amounts to a six-month permit. The Medicare agency is responsible for expanding coverage to the uninsured under the health care law.

Shortly before the launch, Fryer had told other top officials that she could not recommend going ahead because security testing had not been completed.

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Health care website passes recent security examination

Health care website has passed security testing, experts say

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A woman reads the HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace internet site. (Karen Bleier, AFP)

WASHINGTON Cybersecurity concerns over the federal health care website have been cleared up through testing, said a government security professional who initially had qualms about the system to lawmakers on Thursday.

But a congressional hearing featuring three senior technology experts from within the Health and Human Services Department also revealed a broader internal debate before the hapless launch of healthcare.gov last fall.

One of the witnesses, HHS Chief Information Officer Frank Baitman, said he personally brought security issues to the attention of the department's second-in-command, Bill Corr, as well as another senior official. It's unclear what, if anything, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House officials were told.

The technical problems that frustrated consumers for weeks as they tried to sign up for health insurance would pale in comparison if a serious security breach compromised the names, Social Security numbers, incomes and other personal information of millions of Americans.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are trying to build a case that the administration ignored security concerns to meet a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline for flipping the switch. The administration and Democratic lawmakers say all issues were addressed through special vigilance instituted just before the launch.

Officials told the committee that no attempted attack by hackers has succeeded, though a shadowy group calling itself "Destroy Obamacare" has tried. There have been 13 known inadvertent exposures or disclosures of information.

The root of the controversy is that the health care site did not get full security testing, as is the usual practice with federal systems before they are put into use.

However, Medicare's top cybersecurity official testified Thursday that the revamped website passed full security tests Dec. 18, easing her concerns about vulnerabilities. Teresa Fryer, chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had initially balked at the site going live.

She said Thursday she would now recommend full operational and security certification for the site, which currently has what amounts to a six-month permit.

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Health care website has passed security testing, experts say

Gene Therapy Breakthrough Could ‘Cure’ Blindness

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By Thomas Moore, Health and Science Correspondent

Patients suffering from an inherited form of blindness have for the first time had their vision dramatically improved by gene therapy.

The first six patients to be given the experimental injections into the back of the eye were all able to see better in dim light.

And two of them were able to read more lines on an eye chart.

The patients were born with a genetic form of blindness called choroideremia, which affects 1 in 50,000 people, most of them boys, who start to lose their vision in late childhood.

But in a groundbreaking clinical trial, doctors at the Oxford Eye Hospital injected a harmless virus that had been engineered to carry a working copy of the gene that sufferers lack.

The trial was intended to confirm that the injections did not damage the delicate light-sensing cells in the retina.

But the gene therapy had an unexpected therapeutic benefit - and three more patients have now been treated with a higher dose.

Professor Robert MacLaren of Oxford University, who led the trial, said: "In truth we did not expect to see such dramatic improvements in visual acuity.

"It is still too early to know if the gene therapy treatment will last indefinitely, but we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case."

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Gene Therapy Breakthrough Could 'Cure' Blindness

Futurism: Information from Answers.com – Answers – The Most …

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A term coined by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876 - 1944), Futurism emphasized discarding the static and irrelevant art of the past. It celebrated change, originality, and innovation in culture and society and glorified the new technology of the twentieth century, with emphasis on dynamism, speed, energy, and power. Russian Futurism, founded by Velimir Khlebnikov (1885 - 1922), a poet and a mystic, and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930), the leading poet of Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period, went beyond its Italian model with a focus on a revolutionary social and political outlook. In 1912 the Russian Futurists issued the manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" that advocated the ideas of Italian futurism and attacked Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. With the Revolution of 1917, the Russian Futurists attempted to dominate postrevolutionary culture in hopes of creating a new art integrating all aspects of daily life within a vision of total world transformation; artists would respond to a call to transcend and remake reality through a revolutionized aesthetic, to break down the barriers that had heretofore alienated the old art and the old reality. Russian Futurism argued that art, by eliciting predetermined emotions, could organize the will of the masses for action toward desired goals. In 1923 Mayakovsky cofounded with Osip Brik the Dadaistic journal LEF. Soviet avant-garde architects led by Nikolai Ladovsky were also highly influenced by Futurism and the theory that humanity's "world understanding" becomes a driving force determining human action only when it is fused with world-perception, defined as "the sum of man's emotional values created by sympathy or revulsion, friendship or animosity, joy or sorrow, fear or courage." Only by sensing the world through the "feeling of matter" could one understand, and thus be driven to change, the world. The Futurists were initially favored by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet commissar of education, and obtained important cultural posts. But by 1930 they had lost influence within the government and within most of the literary community.

Bibliography

Janecek, Gerald. (1996). Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University Press.

Markov, Vladimir. (1968). Russian Futurism: A History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

HUGH D. HUDSON JR.

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Futurism: Information from Answers.com - Answers - The Most ...

Muscle cars get swanky with the Equus Bass770

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With the sixth generation of the Mustang, Ford has made a purposeful move away from the retro lines of the previous generation and toward a decidedly more modern look. Fortunately for those that prefer the heyday styling of true 60s and 70s muscle cars, there's a new option. Michigan-based Equus Automotive combines classic muscle-car looks and power with luxuriously appointed interiors.

We've previously looked at the Equus Bass770, but the public premiere at this week's North American International Auto Show was the first chance we got to get up close. We're not all that sure there's much of a market for a US$250,000 luxe-muscle car, but if there is, it's sure to storm Equus' doors. The car has some serious presence.

While automakers like Ford and Dodge are focused on more of a "retro futurism," Equus has the courage to say without hesitation that the most imitable muscle car designs were the originals. So what if they're 50 years old, they still look good. We think car enthusiasts will agree as they look over the Bass770's flat face, round headlamps and fastback cabin, all of which look lifted straight out of muscle-car past without much modernization at all. Equus knows what it likes about muscle car styling and it's not afraid to emulate it.

In its quiet downstairs corner of the Detroit show, from a distance the Equus booth looked much more like a classic muscle car display than the home of a world-premiere sports car. It wasn't until you walked past the velvet ropes and popped the driver-side door that the car's true character came to life.

The interior is hand-wrapped in rich, colorful leather that is carefully matched to the exterior. Polished metal and modern instrumentation pop vividly against the leather backdrop. It's certainly a staircase beyond the transmission tunnel-divided bucket seats, floating dashboard and flagpole-sized shifter of a 60s-era Mustang.

Since the Bass770 hasn't changed much from its first appearance in September, we won't cover all the ins and outs, but we do feel obliged to repeat the meatiest specs. The 770 is powered by a 6.2-liter supercharged GM LS9 V8 that puts out 640 hp and 605 lb-ft of torque.

From a comfortable niche within the front of the aluminum chassis, that engine pushes the car to 60 mph (96.5 km/h) in 3.4 seconds before firing it up to a 200 mph (322 km/h) top speed, as the driver shifts manually between six speeds. Systems like magnetic selective ride control and performance traction management ensure all that brute power is put to work creating a tight ride.

Equus recently began production on the $250,000 Bass770 and told us deliveries will take about three to five months. It plans to work closely with each customer to create a bespoke machine hand-built to their specifications.

Source: Equus Automotive

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Muscle cars get swanky with the Equus Bass770

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag: Freedom Cry – Part 10: Sinking – Walkthrough / Let’s Play – Video

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Assassin #39;s Creed IV: Black Flag: Freedom Cry - Part 10: Sinking - Walkthrough / Let #39;s Play
Things don #39;t go quite as planned as we free some more slaves from a ship and go after the governor.. ================= Please remember to leave a like; it he...

By: praskieva

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Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: Freedom Cry - Part 10: Sinking - Walkthrough / Let's Play - Video