No Sexism Here? Sequoia?s Greg McAdoo Says Venture Business Is A ?Meritocracy?

investor-panelJust a day after a gender discrimination suit was filed against one of Silicon Valley's most storied firms Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, an all-male panel of VCs at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference said that sexism isn't that much of an issue in the industry. "This business is a meritocracy by and large," said Greg McAdoo, who is a partner at Sequoia Capital and said that the firm has female partners. "I have no doubt that there are pockets of issues, because in humanity you're going to have that." He added, "We look for folks who can help companies become great businesses over time and we don't ask a lot of questions about gender or what have you."

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Cannes: Anja Rubik relaunching Playboy-inspired fashion mag

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Violent Tel Aviv demo against African migrants

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Army spy blimp to launch within weeks: 300 feet long, $500 million, 'multi-intelligent'

Image

It can't go faster than 34MPH and it's already a year late for its planned deployment in Afghanistan, but Northrop Grumman's Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) is now set for its maiden flight. The test run is scheduled for sometime between June 6th and 10th over Lakehurst, New Jersey, whose residents ought to be forewarned that it is not a solar eclipse or a Death Star, but simply a helium-filled pilotless reconnaissance and communications airship that happens to be the size of a football field. After floating around for a while, the giant dirigible is expected to journey south to Florida, where it'll be fitted to a custom-built gondola that will carry the bulk of its equipment, and by which time her enemies hopefully won't have come into possession of an air force.

Army spy blimp to launch within weeks: 300 feet long, $500 million, 'multi-intelligent' originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 May 2012 08:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google CEO rips Facebook over user data

19 hrs.

Google and Facebook aren't likely to ever friend or G-plus each other; the two compete intensely?over search, advertising and data collection. Google CEO Larry Page took quite a jab at Facebook on "The Charlie Rose Show," saying that Facebook is holding their "users hostage" when it comes to data sharing.

At issue is a longtime spat between the two Internet giants. Google used to let Facebook users import their Gmail contacts to Facebook if they wanted to do so. Then, in November, 2010, the search giant stopped allowing it because it said the?data flow was a one-way street with Facebook, which?doesn't let users share their Facebook contacts info with Gmail.

In the Monday night interview, Rose asked the Google CEO if he was worried about Facebook's "competition in search." Said Page (at about?12:48 minutes?into the interview): "It's something we take seriously?... I think it's been?unfortunate that Facebook has been pretty closed with their data."

Page said Google understands that when a user joins Facebook, he or she wants to be able to add their Gmail contacts to Facebook.?

"Google always said 'Fine, you can get them from Google.' The issue we had is that, then Facebook said, 'No, Google, you can't do the reverse. And so we just said, 'Well,?users don't understand what they're doing, they're putting data in, they don't understand they can't take it out ..??and so we said we'll only participate with people who have reciprocity. and we're still waiting (for reciprocity)."

The Google CEO was asked if he thought Facebook might change its position in the future.

I mean?hope so, I imagine they'll be forced to eventually, if they don't choose to. I think?the idea that you'd hold your users hostage and have some reasons for it that don't make sense ?... They claim it's a privacy issue, but it's not, really,?because they do it with Yahoo, they just don't do it with us. You don't want to be holding your?users hostage; we want there to be a competitive market ... so we think it's important that U.S. users of Google can take their data, and take it out if you need to, or take it somewhere else."

Asked about Page's remarks,?Facebook told msnbc.com it is declining to comment.

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

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Science & the Public: Redefining ?concern? over lead

Federal health agency accedes to two decades of accumulating toxicology data

Web edition : 3:58 pm

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on May 16 that it would no longer designate any particular blood-lead value in children as representing a ?level of concern.? Its justification: There is no threshold below which lead exposures are not a concern.

?Because there?s no identified safe exposure level for lead in children, ?level of concern? is a misleading statement,? explains Christopher Portier, who directs CDC?s National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The old term implied lower concentrations might be okay. By jettisoning the old language, federal agencies are now free to advocate broadly what a growing number of lead toxicologists have been saying for decades: That because lead poisons the brain, and because there is no safe level, all affordable means should be considered to limit every child?s exposure to lead.

Until this week, U.S. federal agencies had held onto an outmoded 10 microgram per deciliter blood-lead level as "concerning."

In January, a CDC advisory committee concluded that made no sense. It noted that blood-lead levels below 10 ?g/dl have been linked to IQ deficits, impaired attention-related behaviors and poor school achievement. It also pointed out that data demonstrating harm from what were recently considered low levels of lead extend ?beyond cognitive function to include cardiovascular, immunological, and endocrine effects.?

This realization that lead harms multiple organ systems ? and its effects appear irreversible ? ?underscores the critical importance of primary prevention,? the advisory committee concluded. Bottom line: All kids are at risk, so all should be screened. Their parents need to be given specific blood lead numbers, it said, and they should be informed that no value is ?safe.? CDC has now formally accepted those recommendations.

Federal efforts from here out will target all children in the top 2.5 percent of blood-lead values for priority attention. That top exposure group now includes some 400,000 to 450,000 kids five years old and younger ? some with blood lead values as low as 5 ?g/dl.

For the families of children who fall into this newly defined category, the advisory panel recommended enhanced education on lead risks and exposure prevention, investigations to probe the source of a child?s exposures and long-term medical monitoring for symptoms of toxicity.

CDC has now endorsed this policy. Indeed, Portier says, ?by tracking where these [most exposed] children are found, we can find communities or neighborhoods where there appear to be high levels of lead and focus resources on something broader than just the individual child.?

Every four years, childhood cumulative lead values will be assessed nationally. The expectation is that with increased monitoring, remediation of leaded paints and plumbing, and vigilance, those national averages will continue to fall. But Portier says that even if national lead averages fall, his agency will continue to focus lead-prevention efforts on kids in the top 2.5 percent, ?because our target is to push this edge ? the highest exposure group ? down as fast as we possibly can.?

In its new announcement, CDC noted that it didn?t have the money to do everything its advisory board had suggested. For instance, the panel asked CDC to develop and implement a national primary-prevention policy ?to ensure that no children in the United States live or spend significant time in homes, buildings, or other environments that expose them to lead hazards.? While CDC said it liked the idea and would work on developing such guidelines for such a strategy, it also noted that its implementation of such a strategy ?is not currently practicable.?

CDC also agreed in principle with a need for educating physicians on the extent of low-level lead risks, on the need for followup testing of kids in the upper-exposure group until they fall below the 5 ?g/dl level, and on the need to alert local or state officials about childhood patients testing in the upper-exposure category. However, Portier?s agency noted, full implementation of each of these recommendations will be ?contingent on funding.?

Even a decade ago, Joel Schwartz of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston was warning that lead has received insufficient respect for its toxicity: Health officials err by deeming low even 2 ?g/dl in blood (5/5/01, p. 277), he argued at the time. Values then deemed fairly low appeared to slightly lower IQ. But small IQ deficits aren?t unimportant, he added, noting that one of his early analyses of lead?s impacts ?showed that if you lower the mean IQ of the U.S. population by one point, you lower the productivity of the economy by about one percent.?

In this era of economic fragility, that should serve as serious food for thought.


Found in: Body & Brain, Environment and Science & Society

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Kansas: County Chooses Motorola for 9-1-1 Radio System | Public ...

Tim Hrenchir, Topeka Capital-Journal

Shawnee County will buy a multimillion dollar public safety radio system from Motorola Solutions Inc.

County Commissioners Ted Ensley, Mary Thomas and Shelly Buhler voted 3-0 Monday to pick Motorola over Cassidian, the other company being considered. Commissioners authorized the county?s emergency communications management board ? a group of law enforcement and emergency response officials ? to work with Motorola to seek to achieve further savings.

Officials with Motorola, Cassidian and the county disagreed at Monday?s meeting over the apples-to-apples amounts those companies were seeking to charge the county to buy the system containing the options it wants.

County counselor Rich Eckert said the price tag was $12,097,357 for Motorola?s system and $12,497,813 for Cassidian?s.

A Cassidian representative challenged any suggestion that his company was seeking to charge more than Motorola.

Topeka Police Chief Ron Miller, chairman of the emergency communications management board, told commissioners that body had voted unanimously to recommend they pick Motorola. He said Motorola offers more in terms of infrastructure, warranty and maintenance.

When Ensley made a motion to approve that selection, he initially received no response. Thomas made a comment about the silence being ?deafening? before Buhler seconded the motion and commissioners approved it.

Miller said the Motorola system will enable authorities to ?encrypt or decrypt anything we want? in terms of allowing the public to hear police radio traffic using scanners.

Shawnee County?s sheriff would be charged with deciding specifically what traffic would be encrypted, Miller said.

Sheriff Herman Jones told reporters after Monday?s meeting he had no issue with allowing the public to continue to hear traffic involving such situations as fires and traffic stops.

But Jones said he thinks scanner traffic should be encrypted in situations where that is necessary for officer or public safety, such as when officers are going on a drug raid or involved in hostage negotiations.

Eckert said last week that Motorola and Cassidian both offer two encryptions ? one called ?advanced digital privacy? which, with some work, can be hacked, and another called ?advanced encryption standard,? which virtually can?t.

Monday?s vote arranges for the county to acquire both types of encryption, Eckert said.

Local officials for more than a year have looked at buying a digital public safety radio system to replace the 15-year-old, 800-megahertz analog system used by almost all law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical responders within Shawnee County. Commissioners were told the county had no choice but to replace that system.

Local law enforcement and emergency response officials asked commissioners in February 2011 to enter into a $19.2 million lease-purchase agreement with Motorola to acquire a digital system. That figure included about $1 million to buy land and construct buildings.

Miller said Monday that commissioners saved taxpayers about $6 million when they opted not to enter into that agreement and started the negotiation process that put Motorola and Cassidian in competition with each other.

Miller estimated costs for the project will now total about $13.2 million, with slightly more than $12 million going to Motorola and about $1 million being paid to buy land and construct buildings, costs that won?t be covered by Motorola?s current offer.

Eckert said plans called for bonds to be issued to finance the purchase, and paid off using proceeds from a 53-cent 911 tax the county receives after cellphone owners pay it as part of their monthly bill.

Participants often used technical radio jargon at Monday?s meeting, where a Cassidian representative said the company was pleased to have played a role in driving down the cost of Shawnee County?s system.

At one point, representatives for Motorola and Cassidian stood together at the lectern in commission chambers debating each other.

Copyright ? 2012 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Boehner draws line in sand on debt ceiling

The Speaker of the House says any raise in the debt ceiling must be accompanied by steep cuts.

By Andrew Taylor,?The Associated Press / May 15, 2012

Speaker John Boehner speaks at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2012 Fiscal Summit on May 15 in Washington.

MANUEL BALCE CENETA/AP PHOTO

Enlarge

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that when Congress raises the nation's borrowing cap he will again insist on spending cuts and budget reforms to offset the increase.

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In remarks Tuesday afternoon at a budget conference in Washington, the Ohio Republican said he welcomes another wrenching debate on increasing the so-called debt limit because it forces a Congress and White House plagued by gridlock to make difficult decisions.

Boehner also said that the GOP-controlled House will vote to extend Bush-era tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year and that the House will act next year on "broad-based tax reform that lowers rates for individuals and businesses while closing deductions, credits and special carveouts."

RECOMMENDED: 9 top reasons the Congress is broken

According to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the government will hit its borrowing cap later this year, but Treasury can use accounting maneuvers to buy time for the newly elected Congress to deal with the issue early next year.

About a year ago, Boehner made a similar promise demanding spending cuts spread over a decade exceed the amount of increase in the debt limit, which at the time was discounted by some in official Washington.

"When the time comes, I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase," Boehner said at a "budget summit" sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates tackling the nation's debt problem. "This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance."

Asked whether President Barack Obama agreed that any increase in the debt ceiling should be offset by spending cuts, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that scenario would present an ugly repeat of last year when Republicans held the U.S. government credit "hostage," as Carney put it.

"It can't possibly be the case that the right prescription for what we need to do right now is to engage in the kind of political brinksmanship that, unfortunately, congressional Republicans engaged in last year," Carney said. "So we're not going to do that."

Yet it was unclear how the White House could prevent it if the Republican-led Congress again insists on commensurate cuts. Carney said Obama would again demand balancing spending cuts with an increase in tax revenue, which Republicans have rejected.

Boehner said it may take one or more stopgap debt increases to buy time for a larger bargain.

Last year, Congress and Obama ? with Boehner playing a lead role ? agreed on a 10-year, $2 trillion-plus package of spending cuts the coming decade. The measure paired caps on domestic agency operating budgets with the promise of $1.2 trillion in further deficit cuts though a so-called deficit supercommittee.

But the supercommittee's failure to reach a deal has forced a scheduled painful round of automatic spending cuts at the Pentagon and other Cabinet agencies next year, along with a 2 percent cut to Medicare providers. Lawmakers are already trying to unwind those cuts, which take effect in January.

Boehner seemed to warn that he won't permit such a scheme this time around.

"Just so we're clear, I'm talking about real cuts and reforms ? not these tricks and gimmicks that have given Washington a pass on grappling with its spending," he said.

Geithner warned against a replay of last summer's debt crisis, which led to a downgrade in the U.S. government's credit rating.

"This commitment to meet the obligations of the nation, this commitment to protect the creditworthiness of the country is a fundamental commitment you can never call into question or violate because it's the foundation for any market economy," Geithner said Tuesday morning at the same event. "This allows us to govern, to fight wars, to deal with crises, recessions, to adjust to a changing world."

RECOMMENDED: 9 top reasons the Congress is broken

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Two more North American LNG export projects planned

NEW YORK/CALGARY (Reuters) - Energy companies announced two multibillion-dollar North American liquefied natural gas export plants on Tuesday, adding to a lengthening list of projects aimed at shipping surplus gas overseas to take advantage of more lucrative markets.

Excelerate Energy, the U.S. liquefied natural gas company founded by Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, plans to develop the country's first floating LNG export plant off the Gulf Coast, while Royal Dutch Shell has partnered with Asian buyers to build a plant in western Canada.

The two projects add to 10 others in various stages of development in North America over the last few years as a huge supply surge from shale deposits floods the market and pushes prices far below levels in Europe and Asia.

The export of LNG, which is natural gas cooled to a liquid for shipping, marks a stark turnaround for North American energy companies, which 10 years ago were scrambling to build import terminals before shale gas production unlocked decades of supplies.

It has sparked a political debate in the United States over whether cheap resources would be better used domestically. The Obama administration said on Monday that it does not oppose U.S. LNG exports, though it will depend on an official analysis to guide its decision on whether to allow more gas projects to proceed.

But Canada, whose vast gas reserves in British Columbia are stranded without demand from the amply-supplied United States, is racing to find needy buyers in Asia willing to pay dearly for the fuel. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has identified LNG exports as a major economic opportunity and job creator in Canada's westernmost province.

"Canada is a lot more open to exports than the United States. The U.S. market is bigger and there is more potential for that gas to serve domestic needs - more than in British Columbia," said John Malone, analyst at Global Hunter Securities in New York.

Shell, along with PetroChina, South Korea's Kogas and Mitsubishi Corp, will study a liquefaction plant at Kitimat, British Columbia, that would initially include two units with capacity of 6 million metric tons (1 metric ton = 1.1023 tons) annually each, or a total of 2 billion cubic feet a day.

RUSH TO KITIMAT

It could be in service by the end of the decade, pending regulatory approvals. Called LNG Canada, it is the third major plant to be announced on the West Coast port in recent years, following Kitimat LNG, led by Apache Corp, and BC LNG Export Co-operative, both of which have export licenses.

Others are in the study stage at Kitimat, which looks set to become a major supply hub for the Pacific Rim.

In the United States, only Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass project has full export approval.

Lorraine Mitchelmore, president of Shell's Canadian division, said it is unlikely that the rush to build LNG plants on the West Coast will mean a saturated market, with Asian economies, the world's fastest growing, as the target markets.

Meanwhile, fast-advancing shale gas recovery technology can unlock gas reserves in Western Canada of as much as 200 trillion cubic feet, Mitchelmore said. British Columbia's supply sources include the massive Horn River and Montney shale gas formations.

"So we see an incredible demand and a very competitive supply here in western Canada, so we see a huge opportunity to supply this competitive gas," she told Reuters.

LNG Canada will negotiate with a third party to build and own a pipeline to connect the supply to the plant, she said.

LNG prices in Asia are at four-year highs of about $18 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), while U.S. benchmark prices languish around $2.50 mmBtu, weighed down by oversupply.

"Given where the Canadian gas reserves are, especially Horn River, they are unlikely to make any money in the U.S. gas

Excelerate's Lavaca Bay LNG project off Texas, expected to start exporting by 2017, would initially have the capacity to ship 3 million to 4 million metric tons per year (mtpa) of LNG, or 0.4-0.5 billion cubic feet per day of gas, Excelerate said in a statement. It could be expanded to 8 mtpa, or about 1 percent of daily U.S. supply.

The relatively small size of the floating liquefaction project, compared to an onshore site, could speed up construction, which is expected to take just 44 months, according to Excelerate. Most LNG projects take at least four years to build.

(Editing by Bob Burgdorfer and David Gregorio)

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