Global economic imbalances have played a critical role in the development of the financial crisis, and financial markets are now central to bring about an economic rebalancing of the world as argued in a recent note by Ramin Toloui of PIMCO, the well known asset manager. To summarise:
-The nexus between global economic rebalancing and global portfolio rebalancing is key to bringing about stability in markets and economies.
-A multi-year reallocation by global investors away from developed markets into emerging markets will facilitate both global economic and portfolio rebalancing.
-The global economy has been built on servicing the needs of consumers in the developed world, particularly in the US. At the heart of the problem is consumers in industrial economies consuming too much and those in emerging countries consuming too little.
-The extent of global dependence on the US is reflected in the dependence of EM growth on the US current account deficit – a 1% increase in the US deficit has historically led to a 1% increase in EM growth.
-Global rebalancing requires a decline in the US deficit and a resulting fall in EM growth rates, implying profound structural changes in the global economy relating to the consumption and production of goods.
-The relative prices of goods, of credit and currencies will play a critical role in determining the type of goods that will get consumed, where they get produced, and into which sectors and countries is investment capital to be channelled to produce these goods..
-While the ready availability of cheap finance to US consumers was one side of the global imbalance story, the insufficient access to finance for some key sectors in emerging markets was the other less noticed side.
-For example, investment ratios for small companies in Asia have stagnated since the Asian crisis in the late 1990s. These firms are, on average, more labour-intensive and serve the domestic-oriented service side of the economy.
-A flow of investment capital into the small business sectors in emerging markets will reduce their cost of capital, encouraging more investment and employment which in turn would boost incomes and domestic consumption- a virtuous cycle.
-In addition, increased capital flows into emerging markets will lead to an appreciation of their currencies which in turn will increase demand for domestic goods and shift production away from the export sector to the domestic sector.
-Another impact will be the shift in production chains between the developed world and emerging markets – for example, in areas like electrical machinery and office and data processing machines, cost differences account for 70% of decisions to move production from the US to China. Exchange rate movements are critical to relative costs of production.
-However, the mental and organizational structure of the asset management industry in the developed world has been built around a world with a sharp distinction between "developed countries" and "emerging markets".
-An illustration of this outdated distinction was made clear during the recent crisis – where asset managers made the mistake of equating "hard" interest rate versus "soft" credit duration risk with developed markets versus emerging markets, rather than economic fundamentals.
-This led them to hold large developed country bonds which were supposed to have only interest rate risk (i.e. Greece, Italy, Spain) but now have credit risk, and not holding bonds in some emerging markets countries which were traditionally supposed to be credit risk (i.e. Brazil, South Africa) but actually enjoyed price gains due to interest rate cuts.
-It would be a mistake to assume that asset management would remain static; according to a 2011 IMF survey of asset managers, the top two factors cited as driving country allocations were "economic growth prospects" and "sovereign debt issues", which will ultimately favour capital flows into EM.
-Lopsided allocations to developed world assets are inconsistent with the weight of emerging markets in the global economy - EM accounts for 36% of global output and 68% of GDP growth, but only represents 4% of global equity portfolios of US investors. The representation in bond portfolios is even lower.
-Portfolio reallocation is poised to be global phenomenon spanning across retail and institutional investors – and this reallocation potential is massive.
-At a structural level, GDP weighting, rather than market-capitalization weighting which dubiously skews bond portfolios into having higher weightings in countries with high debt, is getting widespread adoption. For example, Norway's $600 BN sovereign wealth fund recently announced a switch to a GDP-weighted allocation for its global bond portfolio, thereby boosting its EM weighting.
-The same economic and debt fundamentals that make economic rebalancing imperative also induce capital flows from the developed world into emerging markets, which in turn effect key prices like exchange rates and interest rates that govern the behaviour of households, companies and investors leading to further global economic rebalancing. Policy makers, regulators and investors are only beginning grapple with this profound shift.
A deeply insightful note which reinforces the theme reiterated in previous newsletters- to construct a well diversified portfolio with exposure to key emerging markets (China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia as well as other "global growth generators " to borrow a term from Citibank's economics team and as described in a previous newsletter), in stocks, bonds as well as currencies. In addition, exposure to global and US energy, natural resources and multinational companies which will benefit from emerging market growth would make sense. Drilling down further, having a reasonable weighting in small and medium-sized EM stocks would be appropriate as this sector is currently capital constrained and would benefit from the above described portfolio reallocation. Yes this portfolio reallocation will be gradual over the course of this decade, but being positioned to take advantage of these flows would be important so as not to miss the big market moves.
Facebook has modified sharing options on the Timeline to allow folks to share their organ donor status on Facebook. The company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is discussing the new feature this morning on ABC's Good Morning America. Facebook users already signed up with a donor registry can add the date they signed up and have the event appears in the Timeline and "About" section of their profile, along with a personal story snippet. For the unregistered, Facebook links to a registry page, letting users sign up without leaving Facebook. According to some specialists, this ease of access (and social nudge) could encourage more people to sign up to be donors. On a slightly murkier level, the admission of donation preference on a Facebook status could act as evidence of consent, the New York Times notes. The U.S. sees 7,000 deaths a year due to lack of access to a transplant, compared to 18,000 deaths a year from AIDS.
Delta Air Lines Inc will buy a Pennsylvania oil refinery from ConocoPhillips for $150 million, an audacious bid to save money on fuel costs by investing in a sector shunned by many of the biggest oil firms.
Atlanta-based Delta said the first ever purchase of a refinery by an airline would allow it to cut $300 million annually from jet fuel costs, which reached $12 billion last year. It said production at the refinery along with other agreements to exchange refined products for jet fuel would provide 80 percent of its fuel needs in the United States.
The deal for the idled 185,000 barrel per day Trainer, Pa., refinery, which has puzzled analysts since it first surfaced last month, will come as some relief to politicians and officials, who had feared thousands of lost jobs and a potential summer spike in fuel costs if the plant was shut permanently.
And while the initial investment is no more than a wide-body jet liner, even including an additional $100 million to upgrade the plant to maximise jet fuel production, it will put Delta in the unique position of hoping that the recent rebound in refinery profit margins -- normally an indication of added costs for a fuel consumer -- doesn't prove too fleeting.
While Delta will remain hostage to fluctuating crude oil costs, the facility would enable it to save on the cost of refining a barrel of jet fuel, which is currently more than $2 billion a year for Delta and has been rising in the wake of U.S. refinery shutdowns, said Delta Chief Executive Richard Anderson.
"What we're tackling here today is the jet crack spread, which you cannot hedge in the marketplace effectively," Anderson told reporters during a phone briefing. "It's the fastest single growing cost in our book of expense at Delta."
As expected, Delta will effectively outsource all the oil trading requirements for the refinery, an increasingly frequent arrangement for smaller or less-experienced operators.
But instead of JP Morgan , which had been initially named as the trader last month, oil major BP will supply crude oil to be refined at the plant under a three-year agreement. And BP and former refinery owner Phillips 66 will get a share of the gasoline, diesel and refined fuel to sell, in exchange for supplying Delta with jet fuel in other locations.
It will be a familiar role for BP, which owned the plant in the 1990s before selling it to independent refiner Tosco in 1996 for $59 million, coupled with some additoinal assets. Tosco later merged with Phillips, which then merged with Conoco.
The refinery is expected to resume operations in the third quarter, Delta said, about a year after ConocoPhillips idled the plant as rising imported crude oil costs, a collapse in demand and tough competition from foreign refiners crushed margins.
Delta said the deal will include pipelines and other assets that will provide access to the delivery network for jet fuel reaching its Northeast operations, including its increasingly important hubs at New York's LaGuardia and JFK airports.
Fuel costs pushed major U.S. airlines into the red for the first quarter, although oil prices have since eased from March peaks. U.S. crude traded around $105 a barrel on Monday, while Brent crude was about $119 a barrel.
CAUTIOUS RESPONSE
The deal offers a reprieve to one of two key refineries that had been earmarked for permanent closure this year unless buyers were found. Delta said it would get $30 million in state government assistance on the deal.
"This announcement means the preservation of more than 5,000 jobs at the Trainer facility and in related industries," Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said in a statement.
But at the same time it will raise questions among oil sector analysts about whether the rush to revive one of the half-dozen East Coast facilities that has been shut in recent years may be premature given lingering questions over whether these plants can compete without access to cheap crude.
Profit margins in April rose to their highest since 2008, according to a Credit Suisse analysis, and are up more than 60 percent from the average of last year as the planned closure of some 1.5 million bpd, including two refineries in the Carribean, threatened to cut East Coast capacity to just a third of its peak in 2008. The cuts are deeper when factoring in Europe.
But in addition to Trainer, private equity fund The Carlyle Group is in talks to buy the biggest refinery in Philadelphia, potentially pulling another plant back from the brink.
The analysts at Credit Suisse say another 2.6 million bpd of refining capacity across the globe must be shut "to hit the "sweet spot" utilization level of 87 percent".
The Delta refinery would be run by a leadership team headed by Jeffrey Warmann, who last ran Murphy Oil USA's Meraux, Louisiana, refinery.
East Coast refineries, among the oldest and least advanced in the country, have been hammered by a series of bad turns: the 2008 recession that cut demand; the rapid injection of ethanol into the U.S. gasoline mix; tougher environmental norms; and the rise of new, more sophisticated plants in India and elsewhere.
The final blow for many has been the surge in cheap shale oil production from North Dakota and West Texas, which has handed a bounty of cut-priced crude to Midwest and Gulf rivals who are now running their plants flat-out.
WILL IT WORK?
Robert Mann, an airline consultant in Port Washington, New York, said Delta's statement did not address how it will handle exposure to fluctuations in energy prices or refined product costs or the actual refining process costs.
"It's clearly a very innovative approach, but I think it will be a number of years before we know whether it actually works out," Mann said.
Delta is the world's second-largest air carrier, behind United Continental Holdings . The airline expects the purchase to add to its earnings in the first year of operations.
Delta's Monroe Energy LLC unit expects to close the purchase in the first half. JP Morgan Chaseadvised it in the purchase, Delta said.
Delta shares were little changed in extended trading after the announcement, which was widely expected.
( Source: Reuters )
..................
Atlanta-based Delta said the first ever purchase of a refinery by an airline would allow it to cut $300 million annually from jet fuel costs, which reached $12 billion last year. It said production at the refinery along with other agreements to exchange refined products for jet fuel would provide 80 percent of its fuel needs in the United States.
The deal for the idled 185,000 barrel per day Trainer, Pa., refinery, which has puzzled analysts since it first surfaced last month, will come as some relief to politicians and officials, who had feared thousands of lost jobs and a potential summer spike in fuel costs if the plant was shut permanently.
And while the initial investment is no more than a wide-body jet liner, even including an additional $100 million to upgrade the plant to maximise jet fuel production, it will put Delta in the unique position of hoping that the recent rebound in refinery profit margins -- normally an indication of added costs for a fuel consumer -- doesn't prove too fleeting.
While Delta will remain hostage to fluctuating crude oil costs, the facility would enable it to save on the cost of refining a barrel of jet fuel, which is currently more than $2 billion a year for Delta and has been rising in the wake of U.S. refinery shutdowns, said Delta Chief Executive Richard Anderson.
"What we're tackling here today is the jet crack spread, which you cannot hedge in the marketplace effectively," Anderson told reporters during a phone briefing. "It's the fastest single growing cost in our book of expense at Delta."
As expected, Delta will effectively outsource all the oil trading requirements for the refinery, an increasingly frequent arrangement for smaller or less-experienced operators.
But instead of JP Morgan , which had been initially named as the trader last month, oil major BP will supply crude oil to be refined at the plant under a three-year agreement. And BP and former refinery owner Phillips 66 will get a share of the gasoline, diesel and refined fuel to sell, in exchange for supplying Delta with jet fuel in other locations.
It will be a familiar role for BP, which owned the plant in the 1990s before selling it to independent refiner Tosco in 1996 for $59 million, coupled with some additoinal assets. Tosco later merged with Phillips, which then merged with Conoco.
The refinery is expected to resume operations in the third quarter, Delta said, about a year after ConocoPhillips idled the plant as rising imported crude oil costs, a collapse in demand and tough competition from foreign refiners crushed margins.
Delta said the deal will include pipelines and other assets that will provide access to the delivery network for jet fuel reaching its Northeast operations, including its increasingly important hubs at New York's LaGuardia and JFK airports.
Fuel costs pushed major U.S. airlines into the red for the first quarter, although oil prices have since eased from March peaks. U.S. crude traded around $105 a barrel on Monday, while Brent crude was about $119 a barrel.
CAUTIOUS RESPONSE
The deal offers a reprieve to one of two key refineries that had been earmarked for permanent closure this year unless buyers were found. Delta said it would get $30 million in state government assistance on the deal.
"This announcement means the preservation of more than 5,000 jobs at the Trainer facility and in related industries," Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said in a statement.
But at the same time it will raise questions among oil sector analysts about whether the rush to revive one of the half-dozen East Coast facilities that has been shut in recent years may be premature given lingering questions over whether these plants can compete without access to cheap crude.
Profit margins in April rose to their highest since 2008, according to a Credit Suisse analysis, and are up more than 60 percent from the average of last year as the planned closure of some 1.5 million bpd, including two refineries in the Carribean, threatened to cut East Coast capacity to just a third of its peak in 2008. The cuts are deeper when factoring in Europe.
But in addition to Trainer, private equity fund The Carlyle Group is in talks to buy the biggest refinery in Philadelphia, potentially pulling another plant back from the brink.
The analysts at Credit Suisse say another 2.6 million bpd of refining capacity across the globe must be shut "to hit the "sweet spot" utilization level of 87 percent".
The Delta refinery would be run by a leadership team headed by Jeffrey Warmann, who last ran Murphy Oil USA's Meraux, Louisiana, refinery.
East Coast refineries, among the oldest and least advanced in the country, have been hammered by a series of bad turns: the 2008 recession that cut demand; the rapid injection of ethanol into the U.S. gasoline mix; tougher environmental norms; and the rise of new, more sophisticated plants in India and elsewhere.
The final blow for many has been the surge in cheap shale oil production from North Dakota and West Texas, which has handed a bounty of cut-priced crude to Midwest and Gulf rivals who are now running their plants flat-out.
WILL IT WORK?
Robert Mann, an airline consultant in Port Washington, New York, said Delta's statement did not address how it will handle exposure to fluctuations in energy prices or refined product costs or the actual refining process costs.
"It's clearly a very innovative approach, but I think it will be a number of years before we know whether it actually works out," Mann said.
Delta is the world's second-largest air carrier, behind United Continental Holdings . The airline expects the purchase to add to its earnings in the first year of operations.
Delta's Monroe Energy LLC unit expects to close the purchase in the first half. JP Morgan Chaseadvised it in the purchase, Delta said.
Delta shares were little changed in extended trading after the announcement, which was widely expected.
( Source: Reuters )
..................
Cellphone maker Nokia is in talks to sell its UK luxury subsidiary Vertu, which hand makes some of the world's most expensive mobile phones, a source familiar with the company's strategy said on Monday.
Earlier the Financial Times reported that talks with private equity group Permira were at an advanced stage on a possible sale which would raise about 200 million euros ($265 million).
Vertu's cellphones can feature crystal displays and sapphire keys, costing more than 200,000 pounds ($320,000) due to the precious metal components.
Nokia, which had its credit rating cut to "junk" status by Standard & Poor's last week, first signaled its intention to sell Vertu in December, and recently said it plans to dispose of "non-core assets".
Nokia, once the world's dominant mobile phone provider, declined to comment, while Vertu and Permira were not available for comment.
The FT report, published on its website on Sunday, cited people familiar with the talks as saying Goldman Sachs was advising on the possible sale, but said the outcome was not yet certain.
EQT, the Northern European private equity group, has also been in talks about buying the company, although those close to the process, cited by the FT, say that these are not progressing at this stage.
Earlier the Financial Times reported that talks with private equity group Permira were at an advanced stage on a possible sale which would raise about 200 million euros ($265 million).
Vertu's cellphones can feature crystal displays and sapphire keys, costing more than 200,000 pounds ($320,000) due to the precious metal components.
Nokia, which had its credit rating cut to "junk" status by Standard & Poor's last week, first signaled its intention to sell Vertu in December, and recently said it plans to dispose of "non-core assets".
Nokia, once the world's dominant mobile phone provider, declined to comment, while Vertu and Permira were not available for comment.
The FT report, published on its website on Sunday, cited people familiar with the talks as saying Goldman Sachs was advising on the possible sale, but said the outcome was not yet certain.
EQT, the Northern European private equity group, has also been in talks about buying the company, although those close to the process, cited by the FT, say that these are not progressing at this stage.
Live in one place long enough and you start to develop strong opinions on all the things in the area that could be improved--maybe there’s a vacant lot that would be perfect for a park, or a street that desperately needs bike lanes. Chances are, if you think that lot needs a park and that street needs a bike lane, other people do too. But how can you make your collective voice heard? Neighborland, a New Orleans-based startup that aims to be a social network for neighborhoods across the U.S., is a start.
The recently launched site, which is backed by The Obvious Corporation (an ideas incubator started by the cofounders of Twitter), grew out of cofounder Candy Chang’s projects in New Orleans and Fairbanks, Alaska. In New Orleans, the artist stuck nametag-like stickers saying "I WISH THIS WAS ___” on abandoned structures throughout the city. In Fairbanks, Chang launched a similar project, where an abandoned apartment building was draped in a sign saying "Looking for Love." Passersby were encouraged to use chalkboards at the building’s base to write their hopes and dreams for its future uses.
Neighborland takes the neighborhood revitalization theme a step further, acting kind of like a Digg or Reddit for neighborhood ideas. Go to the New Orleans page, and you’ll see a list of suggestions from users--things like "I want a Computer Science department at Tulane in New Orleans" and "I want a lot more recycle bins available/visible all over the city in New Orleans." Anyone who is signed in can comment or click the "Me Too" button to indicate that they would like the suggestion to be taken seriously. Users can sort through suggestions by what’s current, popular, or new.
When an idea gains enough traction, Neighborland tries to make sure that the appropriate local agencies see it. In one example, a Neighborland idea to bring the new downriver streetcar in New Orleans to Poland Ave. was so popular that Transport for NOLA and Neighborland teamed up ensure that the request was added to the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority’s request for federal funding. After an online petition garnered over 2,200 signatures, Neighborland held an event with local residents and community leaders to bolster support even more.
In another instance, 61 people on the site expressed interest in having the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority open up its GPS data so developers could build smart apps. This caught the eye of local organization Transport for NOLA, which partnered with Neighborland to create a petition that racked up 300 signatures. An open data policy was already on the RTA’s to-do list, but it became a much bigger priority because of the petition. Now the agency has opened up its transit data.
Community organizations can also ask the Neighborhood community what amenities they would like to see. Broad Community Connections, a neighborhood organization in New Orleans, asked users last year what they would like to see on Broad St. The organization received dozens of responses, including "fresh artisan bread," a dance class and martial arts studio," "a dignified swimming hall," and "bike racks outside of businesses."
Neighborland was incubated in New Orleans--that’s why there are so many ideas for the city on the site--but it’s now open to a handful of other locations, including Boulder, Houston, and Minneapolis. It will open up even further in the future. It’s too early to tell whether Neighborland will be successful on a country-wide scale, but a blog post from the Obvious Corporation sums up the need for the service:
"We don’t live in a 1950s TV show. It’s unlikely in most neighborhoods that residents will walk over, knock on your door, introduce themselves, and ask how they can help. However, 'signing in’ to your neighborhood and connecting with those who live around you about shared issues--speed bumps, recycling, whatever--that is a more likely and familiar scenario nowadays. Neighborland has the potential to unite residents and profoundly upgrade our neighborhoods."
Plants do it right. They’ve evolved to use the sun as their main energy source, converting solar energy into chemical energy in a process known as photosynthesis. The result, finely honed over billions of years, is a fast, efficient system that splits water (H2O) up into its component parts. Such a method would be the ideal clean-energy technology, using the sun’s rays to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen, the cleanest natural gas. Scientists have been trying to mimic the system for decades, but they always fell short. It was nearly impossible to split water fast enough for the process to be efficient.
Now, a group of researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, has developed a method that, for the first time, approaches speeds that approximate nature’s own process. The sticking point has always been finding the right catalyst, a molecule that could speed up the chemical reaction in just the right way.Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen isn’t easy--it needs high energy.
“Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen isn’t easy--it needs high energy,” says Licheng Sun, the organic chemist who led the research. The chemical reactions that are required need chemical prompting, and the catalysts that had been created just weren’t efficient enough. “The reported catalysts are too slow. Two hundred orders of magnitude slower than nature, and they couldn’t speed up the process enough for efficient splitting.”
Sun and his colleagues developed a catalyst that, at least when put into solution, split water at close to the same pace as that found in grass and leaves. They’re now working to integrate it into a device that can be commercialized. “I have been working in the field for more than 20 years, and on this catalyst for five years,” Sun says. “This can replace fossil fuels. We don’t need coal, petroleum, or natural gas. We’re only keeping them for energy. But we can use sunlight to drive the whole world.”
Now, a group of researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, has developed a method that, for the first time, approaches speeds that approximate nature’s own process. The sticking point has always been finding the right catalyst, a molecule that could speed up the chemical reaction in just the right way.Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen isn’t easy--it needs high energy.
“Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen isn’t easy--it needs high energy,” says Licheng Sun, the organic chemist who led the research. The chemical reactions that are required need chemical prompting, and the catalysts that had been created just weren’t efficient enough. “The reported catalysts are too slow. Two hundred orders of magnitude slower than nature, and they couldn’t speed up the process enough for efficient splitting.”
Sun and his colleagues developed a catalyst that, at least when put into solution, split water at close to the same pace as that found in grass and leaves. They’re now working to integrate it into a device that can be commercialized. “I have been working in the field for more than 20 years, and on this catalyst for five years,” Sun says. “This can replace fossil fuels. We don’t need coal, petroleum, or natural gas. We’re only keeping them for energy. But we can use sunlight to drive the whole world.”
• AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) CEO in Line for $65 Million Goodbye More...
• China Biologic Products Has Announced the Resignation of CFO Y. Tristan Kuo and Named Mr. Ming Yang as Interim CFO More...
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• New Leaf Venture Partners' Liam Ratcliffe, M.D., Ph.D., Elected to Array BioPharma, Inc. (ARRY)'s Board of Directors More...
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• GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Bid Undervalues Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (HGSI) More...
• MannKind Corporation (MNKD), Tolero Ink $130 Million Development Pact More...
• Pharmaceutical Company Merck Serono Signs an Agreement to UseKadimastem's Platform for Drug Screening More...
• Altor BioScience Corporation and the Melanoma Research Alliance to Co-Support Clinical Studies of Altor's Novel IL-15 Superagonist for Metastatic Melanoma More...
• Cerus Corporation (CERS), the University Hospitals of Geneva, and theTransfusion Service of the Swiss Red Cross Intend to Collaborate on Whole Blood Pathogen Inactivation for Africa More...
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• Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK) Wins Two Patent Lawsuits Against Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (MYL) More...
• Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (TEVA) Settles Nuvigil Litigation with Mylan Inc. (MYL) More...
• China Biologic Products Has Announced the Resignation of CFO Y. Tristan Kuo and Named Mr. Ming Yang as Interim CFO More...
• Array BioPharma, Inc. (ARRY) Names Liam Ratcliffe, M.D., Ph.D., to Board of Directors More...
• New Leaf Venture Partners' Liam Ratcliffe, M.D., Ph.D., Elected to Array BioPharma, Inc. (ARRY)'s Board of Directors More...
• Eyitayo S. Fakunle, Ph.D., Head of CalAsia Pharmaceuticals Translational Research More...
• Balchem Corporation (BCPC) to Build Plant in Alleghany County, Creating 55 New Jobs More...
• Pfizer Inc. (PFE) May Unload Animal Health Unit in IPO More...
• Warner Chilcott, PLC (WCRX) Weighs Sale, Other Options: Report More...
• GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Bid Undervalues Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (HGSI) More...
• MannKind Corporation (MNKD), Tolero Ink $130 Million Development Pact More...
• Pharmaceutical Company Merck Serono Signs an Agreement to UseKadimastem's Platform for Drug Screening More...
• Altor BioScience Corporation and the Melanoma Research Alliance to Co-Support Clinical Studies of Altor's Novel IL-15 Superagonist for Metastatic Melanoma More...
• Cerus Corporation (CERS), the University Hospitals of Geneva, and theTransfusion Service of the Swiss Red Cross Intend to Collaborate on Whole Blood Pathogen Inactivation for Africa More...
• TKL Research, Inc. Selects Medidata Solutions, Inc.' Clinical Trial Management System to Drive Future Growth More...
• Dynavax Technologies Corporation (DVAX) Reports First Quarter 2012 Financial Results More...
• Flamel Technologies (FLML) Announces Projected Release Date of First Quarter 2012 Results and Conference Call More...
• Polydex Pharmaceuticals (POLXF) Reports Profitability In 2012 Fiscal Year End Financial Results More...
• Repligen Corporation (RGEN) Announces Conference Call to Report First Quarter of 2012 Financial Results More...
• Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (SOMX) to Report First Quarter 2012 Results and Conduct Conference Call on Thursday, May 10 More...
• Pfizer Inc. (PFE) Says Brigham Young University Tainted Utah Jury Pool for Trial in Multibillion Dollar Celebrex Case More...
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YouTube cofounders Steve Chan and Chad Hurley just closed a Series A funding round on their new startup AVOS Systems. The group made the announcement at the TNW Conference now underway in Amsterdam. The year-old company took over bookmarking site Delicious from Yahoo, launched its China clone mei.fm, and is working on what looks like a magazine building site over at zeen.com. This funding round is led by Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.
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Samsung may have just sold more smartphones than Apple, according to industry scuttlebutt doing the rounds now--it's all based on rumor because Samsung doesn't reveal sales of its phones separately anymore, and the entire question is muddied because Apple sells just two versions of the iPhone and Samsung's stock covers hundreds of only slightly different varieties. Or, on the other hand, Samsung may not have beaten Apple. It may have achieved a greater marketshare of smartphones globally, or perhaps not. We really don't know, but the widespread chatter about it at least illustrates that people are watching this market keenly. We're more certain that Samsung has now ousted Nokia from its 14-year lead as biggest phone vendor--a plausible fact given Nokia's continuing slip from grace. And we're pretty convinced that Samsung's dirty tricks "smear" PR campaign against Apple customers--accusing them of being sheep--now rings completely hollow.
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Lincoln, Nebraska, is an unlikely test bed for the future of journalism. It’s more than a thousand miles in both directions from the major coastal media markets. None of the country’s big magazine, newspaper, or broadcasting empires is headquartered here. Lincoln isn’t even particularly close to the companies that are producing the hardware of new media platforms. All the way out here on the Great Plains, however, Lincoln is a great place to practice flying drones.
“You can’t swing your arms in Manhattan without hitting people,” says Matt Waite, a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in town. “Not a problem here. We’ve got space to stretch out and do things. And when you’re talking about flying a drone--especially when you’re first figuring it out--not having people around to crash into is a huge thing.”
Strange as this sounds, Waite is certain that drones will be a big part of the future of journalism. And the future of journalism will be tested here because there’s room to do it--quite literally--but also because the University of Nebraska is willing to do the R&D whereas media outlets and more staid journalism schools are not.
“There are not the very heady, haughty silos here,” says Gary Kebbel, the dean of Nebraska’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications. And he wants to enlist everyone from computer scientists to communications theorists to policy wonks working on the politics of drones. On this campus, that’s not such a strange suggestion. “There are people here who totally support and embody the mission of a land-grant university, which is to spread education throughout the state for the benefit of people in the state.”
Kebbel came here two years ago from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he ran the deep-pocketed Knight News Challenge. Kebbel lured Waite onto the faculty to join him last fall with the promise of doing, as Waite says, “out-there kind of stuff.” Waite, a Nebraska native, had previously helped develop the St. Petersburg Times’ political fact-checking site PolitiFact, the first website to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. Since arriving here from Miami, Kebbel has attracted attention for predicting that the future of media lies in mobile devices. He is currently planning to launch a Mobile Media Center that would begin to push the school (and the profession) in that direction.
“Mobile is the only device I’m aware of that is bridging all the digital divides I can possibly think of,” he says. And there are many: the divide between older and younger generations, between urban and rural, poor and wealthy, the well educated and the less so. Today, just about all of these groups have phones, if they have nothing else in common. And that means a journalist reporting on mobile devices can talk to anyone.
Kebbel is not, however, interested just in disseminating the news on cell phones (and this is good news for aspiring journalists who fear we’ll one day all be competing for the most Pulitzer-worthy text messages). He’s also talking about gathering the news with mobile devices. And this is where the drones come in. Kebbel wants the Mobile Media Center to attract grants and redistribute them to fund the research into drones and sensors and other portable tools that might revolutionize not just how the news is consumed, but how its acquired.
Journalists already mine stories from vast datasets. But that data typically comes from government sources. Waite and Kebbel want to deploy the types of mobile devices that could allow journalists to collect their own data. And they believe it’s the job of universities to figure out how to do this.
“They need to be doing R&D that, in particular, in these economic times, news organizations cannot do,” Kebbel says. “They don’t have the money. Some of the research that needs to be done, the boards of these companies would say 'you want to spend money on what?'"
Try to imagine the New York Times funding a drone R&D program. (OK, hologram-happy CNN is less of a stretch, but if they ever did light upon a good journalism drone, they probably wouldn’t share it with anyone.) To explain what Waite (pictured above on the right) wants to do with these things, it’s helpful to first think about weather (a perpetual top story in Nebraska). As a reporter, Waite chased tornados in Arkansas and covered hurricanes in Florida.
“I was thinking all along that it’s great we can rent a helicopter at a couple thousand dollars an hour,” he says, “but wouldn’t it be great to do this as a reporter with something on my back at the scene?” Like maybe a flying camera that could canvass a town in minutes?
Last summer, he stumbled on exactly such a drone at a digital-mapping conference. A company called Gatewing was demoing this video. In it, the Gatewing x100 flies overhead, snaps a zillion photos and then stitches them all back together into one georectified image. “I’m standing there watching this product demo,” Waite recalls, “and I’m thinking of every hurricane, tornado, every flood, every grass fire, every biblical disaster I’d ever covered as a reporter. And I’m like, 'here it is.'"
Waite tried to buy one on the spot. It turns out, though, that the Gatewing x100 costs about $65,000. And it’s currently illegal to fly it in the United States. Drones used for commercial purposes here are outlawed today. But the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill passed by Congress earlier this year is supposed to change that. The FAA now has until September of 2015 to figure out how to legalize drones.
And that means that UNL has the next three years to scale up drone journalism--to develop both the physical drones themselves and the legal, ethical, and safety guidelines that will be needed to actually use them. Right now, Waite says, if you’ve got a drone with enough power to lift a serious camera off the ground, you are effectively launching a flying lawnmower into the air. And soon journalists want to deploy these things over protesting crowds and urban car wrecks?
So there is a lot of work to do out in Nebraska. And this is all just one piece of it.
“We’re defining mobile as broadly as we can, to not just think about it as an iPhone, an iPad, an Android,” Waite says. Today, he has a small drone prototype in his office, the kind of toy you can buy at any Brookstone store. “But with the drone I have, I can actually control the drone with a mobile device, I can record video from it, I can edit that video on my iPhone or iPad, and I can upload that all to the web and never touch a computer. That’s 'mobile' in a lot of senses."
And that’s before we even get to the conversation about which mobile devices people will be using to follow these stories.
