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The global business environment has never been static, but the more companies expand into new regions—and do business with larger numbers of customers, suppliers, banks, and other counterparties, some in far-flung parts of the world—the more they need an overarching view of corporate risk. Treasury & Risk started presenting Alexander Hamilton Awards in the category enterprise risk management (ERM) in 2007. Interest in organization-wide risk management has been intensifying ever since.
One obvious reason was the 2008 financial crisis. For many companies, that was a wake-up call that exposures can change in the blink of an eye and that even the largest counterparties might present more credit risk than they seem to. Liquidity and financial risk management became crucial concerns at the senior management level.
Then regulatory agencies sprang into action, creating a confusing and continuously shifting mass of regulations that affect corporate treasury, finance, and risk management. Amid these financial and regulatory changes, the Arab Spring took shape, as did evolving geopolitical climates in nations such as Russia, Egypt, Libya, and Greece. Together, these factors continue to feed the sense of instability first hatched amid the global financial market freefall.
As a result of pressures from regulators, ratings agencies, and shareholders, many companies began to seriously look at implementing ERM or expanding their ERM programs, both to prevent future losses and to manage uncertainty. Responsibility for enterprise risk management began to move up the corporate food chain.
In the "Accenture 2013 Global Risk Management Study," 98 percent of respondents said risk management is a higher priority for their company today than it was two years ago. Ninety-six percent said the owner of risk management in the company reports directly to the CEO. And 81 percent said the risk management owner regularly discusses risk with the company's board. As Steve Culp, global managing director for Accenture's risk management practice, told Treasury & Risk back in October: "In 2009, when Accenture first undertook the study, risk management was moving beyond compliance. By 2011, it was becoming a source of competitive advantage for many businesses. Today risk management is increasingly connected within multiple aspects of organizations, including governance and leadership structures, analytics and reporting outputs, integration and alignment with other key functions in the investment and decision-making process, and importantly in the talent agenda."
The growing integration of risk management into processes for making investment, liquidity, and other strategic decisions is exemplified by the winners of this year's Alexander Hamilton Awards, sponsored by Kyriba and Strategic Treasurer. "Our philosophy is 'Everyone's a risk manager,'" says Erike Young, deputy director of ERM and director of environment, health, and safety for the University of California's Office of the President. "Anyone who's in a management position technically manages some type of risk."
The University of California may consider a large proportion of its 200,000 employees to be risk managers, but before it launched an ERM initiative in 2004, it was unable to uniformly manage risks. Processes and systems were disparate, and consolidating information was tedious at best. However, with the help of business intelligence software, Young and his colleagues established an organization-wide view of risk management. Today they distribute reports on key risks on a monthly basis, and users who want more details on those risks can get them with the click of a button.
Young's department has also undertaken a campaign to educate faculty and staff throughout the university system about the benefits of ERM. "We've actually started to use the term 'collaborative risk management' in addition to 'enterprise risk management,'" he says. "What ERM, or collaborative risk management, does is change the tone of the discussion from 'This is another compliance requirement' to 'Here's how these risk management procedures will support the university's mission of education, research, and public service.'"
The Alexander Hamilton Award-winning project at Siemens Capital Company focuses in on the management of counterparty credit risk. Even so, the project is broad in vision and in operational scope. Siemens Capital Company consolidates credit information about customers—both external information and internal experiences of Siemens business units around the world. Then the group assigns each customer a risk rating and distributes the risk ratings and other key insights about the counterparty's credit risk to the business units that work with the customer.
Like the University of California, the Siemens Capital team has discovered the power of risk management initiatives to bring together disparate parts of a large organization. "Collaboration among local credit teams on the ground, and between those teams and the Siemens credit warehouse team, is creating new opportunities to raise risk awareness across Siemens," says Doug Schoch, vice president with Siemens Capital Company and relationship manager for the captive business. Participating units have begun sharing ideas and discussing their common challenges, and the credit warehouse is enabling those conversations. Local teams are learning from one another, and the exchange of information is promoting process improvement."
Microsoft, this year's other winner in the ERM category, already had a centralized treasury and risk management infrastructure. But in reaction to events in the financial systems in Greece, Libya, Egypt, and other countries, the company undertook an initiative to reduce risk to its cash balances by rolling out a trio of sophisticated processes around the world: a zero-balance account structure, automated balance sweeps between banks, and a payments-on-behalf-of system.
The new systems minimize the volume of cash Microsoft holds in-country, and they've freed up a good deal of treasury's time for activities that are more strategic than just monitoring cash balances. "We have moved from being more transaction-focused to becoming very business-focused," says Jim Scurlock, senior manager of global cash management. "Treasury, capital management, and liquidity are key for any organization. Treasury needs to be an active participant in a lot of the leadership conversations that happen. It's important to have treasury sitting at the table to help ensure that the company is making the right decisions."
The best way to earn a seat at the table in strategic decision-making is to demonstrate the value of the treasury and risk management functions. All three of this year's Alexander Hamilton Award winners have passed that test with flying colors. They have taken on big projects that have given senior management a bird's-eye view of corporate risk.
Here are their stories.
Revamping Credit Management Around the World
Munich, Germany-based Siemens AG does business through affiliates in the energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and metropolitan-infrastructure sectors around the world. Although Siemens has centralized some financial services, individual business units manage their own credit and collections processes. Several years ago, that became a source of concern for corporate management.
"Although each credit team limited the exposure of its business unit to credit risk from any particular counterparty, we knew that the company overall had large exposures to some of our biggest customers," says Doug Schoch, vice president with Siemens Capital Company LLC USA and relationship manager for the captive business. "As the world economy began to falter and some of our major customers started having financial difficulties, we needed to be able to see which companies posed extraordinary credit risk to Siemens globally. That wasn't feasible when the data was stored in dozens of different databases around the world."
In 2008, Siemens launched an initiative designed to improve transparency into customer credit data. As a first step, it began consolidating information about short-term receivables from business units across the company. A credit warehouse group was formed within the corporate treasury function. This group built a data warehouse to store commercial customer data and then developed connectors between the database and individual business units' SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Trade receivables from across the company began to transfer into the credit warehouse database on a daily basis via automated file transfers.
Then the credit warehouse team developed a system to assign a Siemens-level credit risk rating to each commercial customer. In addition to information about experiences with the customer compiled from different Siemens business units, the internal credit risk ratings are based on data from external ratings agencies and the customer company's financial reports, as well as credit reports. Depending on the level of Siemens' exposure to the customer, the credit warehouse automatically generates the risk rating for the customer or else an analyst manually reviews the account and assigns the risk rating.
A front-end application provides Siemens business units with access to the credit warehouse database. For each commercial customer, users with the appropriate permissions can see the overall Siemens exposure to that company, the internal risk ratings for the company, and the company's credit reports. "Previously, it was difficult for any business unit to get a holistic perspective of credit risk or of the receivables portfolio of Siemens as a whole," says Akhnaton Ngweh, a risk analyst with Siemens Capital Company LLC USA. "Today, a customer's risk profile provides a comprehensive, high-level perspective on the customer's overall risk, and the standardized methodology of the risk ratings helps ensure consistent handling and comparisons across Siemens. By combining this new outlook with their own expertise, local teams can make more-informed decisions."
Business units are using information from the credit warehouse in up-front credit approval decisions, to inform the collections process, and to determine how much to set aside in reserve for each open account. "The business units can use the credit warehouse information in making decisions about whether to extend credit to a particular customer," says Ngweh. "They can also use it in deciding whether to continue doing business with the customer and whether to take additional risk mitigation measures with that customer. And because the credit warehouse provides a holistic view of the risk profile of each customer, some business units have been able to use that knowledge to decide which pricing approach or terms of sale are most appropriate."
The credit warehouse team also built functionality that can automatically transfer the internal risk ratings from the database back to the SAP system of a Siemens business unit, to make use of the metrics even easier to incorporate into day-to-day processes. A daily rating-change report can show up in business units' ERP systems, as well. "The local teams are constantly being challenged to achieve more with tight resources," says Ngweh. "The risk ratings help in this regard because they provide a quick, reliable, and cost-effective measure of credit risk." On top of providing valuable insight into customer credit, the warehouse saves Siemens time by providing consistent credit information globally, avoiding the duplication of effort that may occur when a business unit is assessing credit for a customer base that may overlap with other Siemens divisions.
Siemens does not require business units to adopt the credit warehouse processes, and some groups have been faster to see the benefits than others. "The risk ratings are a bit of a new concept," says Ngweh. "The business units' credit managers are experienced professionals, and they have established their own processes for reviewing accounts through many years on the job. So one area of focus for the credit warehouse project has been to educate other groups to explain the value of the product."
To build buy-in, the credit warehouse team has invited credit and collection managers from across the company to attend collaborative education sessions. "The goal is to show them how they can use our risk rating information in their processes," Ngweh says. "We show them how we develop the risk ratings. We also share success stories of how different units are using our information."
One of the most important results of these sessions—and of the credit warehouse overall—may be the increase in communication that has emerged among different credit and collections organizations. "The different credit managers are communicating with other Siemens entities to understand payment experiences and terms for customers they share," says Ngweh. "One business unit can avoid extending additional credit to a customer that has a past-due account with another unit. The business units are also sharing best practices."
Adds Schoch: "Collaboration among local credit teams on the ground, and between those teams and the Siemens credit warehouse team, is creating new opportunities to raise risk awareness across Siemens. Participating units have begun sharing ideas and discussing their common challenges, and the credit warehouse is enabling those conversations. Local teams are learning from one another, and the exchange of information is promoting process improvement."
Now the credit warehouse team is looking at ways to extend the information consolidation to support Siemens' procurement function. "We realized that some of our customers could also be our suppliers," says Ngweh. "So we thought that the tool could also help procurement users assess supplier risks. We're now helping advise procurement staff on how they can use our resources to assess the financial risks posed by different suppliers."
Repositioning ERM as Collaborative Risk Management
In a corporate environment, the support of senior management tends to help a project progress smoothly. In academia, however, leadership support doesn't necessarily translate into widespread buy-in. "At the University of California, we encourage academic freedom," says Erike Young, deputy director of ERM and director of environment, health, and safety for the university's Office of the President. "Corporations tend to have a certain way of doing things that is consistent between locations, but our campuses pride themselves on being different. Academically, we certainly want that. But from a risk management standpoint, we need consistency."
In 2004, an assortment of different risk management programs were in place across the 10 campuses and 5 medical centers in the University of California system, but no one had a big-picture view of risks organization-wide. "We had a lot of data, but we weren't doing anything with it," Young says. The UC Office of the President launched an ERM program in 2004, pulling risk information from across the organization into data warehouses. A few years later, analysis of this data was still manual and very time-consuming. "We needed a technology solution that would let us combine the data from disparate data sources and then easily analyze that data to gain a clear picture of risks across the organization," Young says.
That's exactly what Young and his colleagues set out to do. In 2009, the university deployed Cognos business intelligence software and, as a proof of concept, created a dashboard revealing key information about workers' comp claims. "Most universities keep an eye on the number of workers' comp injuries for every 100 full-time employees, but most of our campuses weren't looking at this regularly," Young explains. "Among our 200,000 employees, we had about 8,700 injuries at an ultimate cost of about $90 million annually. Tracking them manually would have required a full-time position in each department, so at most, they would run the numbers once a year at the campus level. We set up the Cognos tool to analyze workers' comp claims. Now, with the click of a button, we can see the data at the university level, the campus level, or the department level. We can see a five-year trend. What would have taken a tremendous amount of time to do manually now takes a couple of seconds."
The benefits of this level of visibility were immediately clear, so the university launched the "Working Smarter" initiative with the goal of implementing a system of targeted risk dashboards across all UC campuses. The UC Office of Risk Services was responsible for identifying key risk indicators in areas such as ergonomics, foreign travel, human capital, and medical quality control. Young and his colleagues in the Office of the President convened a panel of vice chancellors, controllers, chief risk officers, and other key managers from each campus to provide input and feedback on their plans for the risk dashboards. They also interviewed more than 300 executives, process owners, and program managers from across the university about their risk management concerns.
Through this process, Young and his colleagues identified 157 key risk indicators and developed 41 dashboards. Today the university maintains a data warehouse that collects source information for the dashboards from personnel data, student information, facilities, etc.
For the majority of users of risk information, the Office of the President pushes out PDF versions of the risk dashboards; most of these reports are generated and distributed on a monthly basis. "The reports show at a glance how well we're doing, with red, yellow, and green light indicators," Young says. "And if senior leadership sees that they're in the red, they're going to find out why. They also pay attention to how they're doing relative to the other campuses. Our campuses have begun competing not just in football, but in metrics." Staff members who want to drill down into the reports' information can do so through the dashboards; permissions are assigned according to the individual's role at the university.
Young and his colleagues educate other university staff about enterprise risk management in general, and the dashboards in particular, through an annual risk summit. The university held its first risk summit in 2005, an event that brought together 143 people. One of its primary goals was to reduce the university's total cost of risk by 15 percent over two years. The ERM program exceeded that initial goal handily, reducing the cost of risk by around 20 percent in the first 18 months. This success convinced the university to extend both the ERM program and the risk summit. Last year's summit included more than 1,100 participants.
"Everyone in the university is invited to attend the risk summit," Young explains. "Our philosophy is 'Everyone's a risk manager.' That's another way to describe ERM. Anyone who's in a management position technically manages some type of risk. So the risk summit includes all kinds of people—for example, rec center directors, occupational health managers, food safety directors, and managers in student affairs. It's a two-day meeting, during which we talk about what ERM is, explain new tools we have available, and share best practices that some of our campuses are doing. We also use it as an opportunity for marketing the idea that ERM is a good thing." The marketing campaign is paying off. Staff across the university's many locations have begun thinking about risk on a daily basis.
Because the university has been able to more accurately allocate resources to the activities that prevent injuries, it has cut workers' comp claims in half—from 8,700 injuries costing more than $90 million per year to 5,000 injuries with an ultimate cost of around $45 million per year. The school has identified over $7 million in savings just by having employees elect to receive their W-2 forms electronically, an activity that is monitored and reported to senior leadership via a dashboard. The Working Smarter program has reduced the insurance rates the university pays for general liability and employment practices policies, and it's even reduced the cost of the university's debt. "Standard & Poor's indicated in their RatingsDirect analysis of UC that ERM is a credit strength for us," Young says. "Our total average annual borrowing exceeds $10 billion. While we can't quantify the exact effect of our ERM program on the rates we pay, if it saves us just 0.1 percent, that would add up to $10 million in annual savings." All told, Young estimates that the Working Smarter program has saved the university $700 million over seven years.
That said, cost savings and compliance are not always the most powerful motivators among faculty members. "On the administrative side, we've achieved really good adoption of the ERM program," Young says. "Now we're working on expanding adoption on the academic side and in some other areas. The ERM team is playing a role of coach and facilitator, trying to have more of an open discussion about risk management. We've actually started to use the term 'collaborative risk management' in addition to the more familiar 'enterprise risk management,' with the idea that the Working Smarter program is a collaboration. It's about breaking down the silos. When we can understand operational and reputational risks at the university level, we can make better decisions in allocating resources."
Young and his colleagues are also helping faculty understand what ERM has to offer them at the individual or department level. "Take lab safety, for example," he says. "From a risk optimization perspective, we want to be the university of choice so that employers are eager to hire our graduates. We also want to be the university where parents want to send their kids. To accomplish these goals, we need to have the best safety program. What ERM, or collaborative risk management, does is change the tone of the discussion from 'This is another compliance requirement' to 'Here's how these risk management procedures will support the university's mission of education, research, and public service.'"
Bird's-Eye View of Corporate Risk
With 120,000 employees around the world, Microsoft is a company with truly global exposures. It is also a company with a truly global risk management program.
"We take a lot of pride in having a centralized treasury function that serves more than 350 subsidiaries in 126 countries," says Jim Scurlock, senior manager of global cash management. "A good portion of the company's risk team is housed within central treasury." Microsoft's treasury function has been closely monitoring global risks for years. Still, recent geopolitical events—including the Great Recession, the Eurozone crisis, and the Arab Spring, as well as turmoil in Greece, Libya, Egypt, and other countries—led the company to look at enhancing its risk management programs. "As our treasurer often says, corporates tend to be prepared for the last crisis but not for the next crisis," Scurlock says.
The primary concern was that if financial markets in a country were to freeze without much warning, Microsoft might not be able to pay salaries, collect revenue from customers, or pay suppliers. "Each time there's a geopolitical event, treasury focuses in on ensuring that we have the right amount of cash in the country at the right time," Scurlock says. "Our goal is to minimize the impact of the event on Microsoft. We determined that our capital markets and risk management organization should more actively and continuously monitor the local cash balances of our subsidiaries. We also decided to minimize cash balances held in local accounts around the world, in order to reduce our exposure to counterparty and sovereign risks."
The global cash management team undertook several major initiatives simultaneously; among them are three automated solutions that, together, have brought local cash balances as close to zero as possible. One is a cross-border, multi-company zero-balance account (ZBA) structure that Microsoft developed with a key banking partner. The bank automatically sweeps all the company's collection accounts into 20 money centers and creates journal entries via a custom-built text-messaging system. Several hundred accounts companywide now end every day with a balance of zero. "This has been absolutely instrumental for us in ensuring that we have all the cash invested in our portfolio at the end of the day," Scurlock says. "It's also significantly reduced the counterparty risks we were incurring by holding cash locally."
Second, the Microsoft global cash management group worked with the company's other banks to set up an automated balance-sweep solution among multiple financial institutions. "We set up a target balance on each account, and when the account balance exceeds that number, it triggers an automated transaction via wire transfer," Scurlock explains. "This was a little bit tougher to set up than the ZBA structure; because the sweeps cross organizational lines, we had to go with a target balance and standing wire solution. Obviously, automation is critical in making this feasible."
The third solution, which allows the business to operate smoothly even as bank account balances hover near zero, is a payments-on-behalf-of (POBO) approach to global accounts payable. Instead of paying suppliers out of local bank accounts, the company now makes the majority of its payments from a centralized portfolio account in a single money center. "The POBO structure has been key for us because it saves us from having to wire hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidiaries' bank accounts around the world," Scurlock says.
Together, these three solutions enable Microsoft to maintain cash balances near zero in most of its bank accounts around the world. The company also moved about 100 bank accounts from riskier, smaller counterparties to large multinational institutions. "Reducing our local cash balances is directly correlated with reducing the risk we face in those countries," Scurlock says. "And by automating concentration of cash, our team has gained more time to focus on long-term initiatives and adding value to strategic projects, as opposed to focusing on transaction-level activities related to manual cash sweeping."
At the same time it was setting up the automated solutions, Microsoft's global cash management team developed a framework that assigns responsibility for monitoring global risks and developed a contingency action plan to guide treasury decisions when a risk is identified. Now at the end of every business day, risk management staff from various areas of treasury meet to review what's happening in the world. Capital markets staff and portfolio managers discuss the political and economic climate. The financial risk team reports on counterparty and sovereign risks. Cash operations and global cash management staff speak to the amount of cash on hand in affected regions. The enterprise risk management team pulls this information into a consolidated report for distribution to treasury and the broader finance leadership group.
When this process indicates that Microsoft should be concerned about a particular geopolitical situation, the contingency action plan defines steps that each affected group should take. The global cash management team monitors subsidiaries' local cash balances daily, as well as keeping close tabs on regulations, capital controls, and the banking systems. The foreign exchange group ensures that the company has sufficient currency to make payments that are due. Cash operations increases the frequency of sweeping cash from local accounts. Payroll and accounts payable work to establish just-in-time funding for items that can't be paid through the POBO structure, so that suppliers and local staff receive payments but the company doesn't have any excess liquidity in local accounts.
"As the teams notice that something might be happening in a specific country, we start looking at how we can limit our exposures there," Scurlock says. "We start accumulating a lot more information about that specific country. We follow the news closely, and we look at what the bond markets are doing. The bond markets are usually a pretty good indicator of what the markets are thinking in terms of riskiness."
These new processes were put to the test in Cyprus in 2012. "We had a good sense of what was going on, but all of a sudden the markets shut down for a significant amount of time," Scurlock recalls. "Since we had been proactive, our cash balances held in the country were almost zero when the crisis hit." But because of how quickly the markets changed, payroll was an issue. "We worked closely with our financial institutions so that when the markets did open temporarily, we quickly initiated payroll transactions in that window," Scurlock adds. "Because of our contingency framework, we had the right answers when our CEO and treasurer started asking questions about cash balances in Cyprus."
Scurlock emphasizes that developing and implementing the contingency framework was a cross-functional endeavor, involving teams from within and outside of treasury. He attributes the initiative's success to the support of Microsoft's treasurer and corporate vice president, George Zinn. "Once you have the company's finance leadership teams engaged, it's much easier to implement change across the company," Scurlock notes.
Throughout the initiative, the global cash management group was responsible for corralling all the different participants and putting in place specific project plans. Its leadership role in this project, as well as the automation of many tasks the group used to perform manually, have expanded the role of the cash management team as a strategic partner to the rest of Microsoft.
In fact, Scurlock advocates automating as much as possible. "But you have to be aware that automation can have a negative downstream impact on other groups," he says. "Make sure you're creating a long-term plan that works, not just for treasury but for your business partners as well. Meet with them, and discuss the pros and cons, with the goal of showing them what their value-add is. And as you work with other organizations, be sure to frame your argument in a way that makes clear that your project is not just in treasury's interests, but in the best interests of the company itself."
This approach has really paid off for the treasury function at Microsoft. "We have moved from being more transaction-focused to becoming very business-focused," Scurlock says. "Now, as Microsoft is pursuing new retail strategies, or cloud computing, or expanding into other new ventures, we can spend more time working with the business to deliver solutions, as opposed to manually monitoring the movement of cash."
Scurlock believes it's appropriate for the treasury function to be involved in a company's strategic decision-making. "Treasury, capital management, and liquidity are key for any organization," he says. "We see the company's funding needs from a comprehensive viewpoint. Treasury needs to be an active participant in a lot of the leadership conversations that happen. It's important to have treasury sitting at the table, serving on the various committees that are responsible for strategic planning, to help ensure that the company is making the right decisions."


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Theories - Origin of Life
Discussion of everything related to the Theory of Evolution.
Moderator: BioTeam
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
If the proportion of the "evidence from Scientific journals and peer reviewed scientific papers" that supports your position were more than tiny, your position might be a bit stronger.
As I said earlier,
And some of it gets published. Publication guarantees nothing.
So far, although you were bullshitting with non-sense, I have respected you at least because you were stick with your opinion, no matter, how silly it may be. But I see, you are neglegting yourself already.
Another thing you have not responded to:
Since you require evidence for evolution, how is that, that you do not require one for ID?
Imagine, that we are able to travel in time and transfer say a car into medieval times. They will try to explain, how the car functions, but none of them will be probably right, since they don't have enough knowledge. Does that mean that the car doesn't work?
Cis or trans? That's what matters.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
Jackbean is on one of his rants again so I will just patiently wait for him to calm down
It is such a pleasant change to discuss this matter in a rational way and for that I do sincerely thank you.
Actually I agree with just about everything you have said,only to comment on your last sentence.
You are right in what I have been trying to do, that is to point to the empirical evidence that shows how unsupported Darwinian theory is.
I fully realise that this attacks the very core belief of many, hence the philosophical noise that is generated toward me.
You so rightly say that science encompasses both logic and empirical evidence.
What I have been doing is presenting empirical evidence against the Darwinian mechanism of speciation, not the logic of it.
Logically a designer could quite rationally have set in train the Darwinian mechanism.
The problem is ---- Does the empirical evidence point in that direction?
Lenny Moss puts this far better than I can
Question—Has that belief been supported by the empirical evidence.
The comparative genome analysis of the Human Genome project has produced some unexpected results.
Lets take just one strand of evidence from the picture that has emerged
Non coding (so called Junk) DNA accounts for only 10% of a one celled prokarote,
only 32% in yeast,
75% in roundworms,
83% in insects,
91% in a pufferfish.
Costa, Fabricio F. (2008). "Non-coding RNAs, Epigenetics and Complexity", Gene vol. 410, pp. 9-17.
Most of the human DNA (some 98%) does not code for proteins.
The bulk of this non coding DNA was referred to as junk i.e. the evolutionary accumulation of meaningless genetic leftovers.
This was a central argument from the likes of Dawkins, Coyne and others and cited as as a main line evidence of random Darwinian evolution.
However it now appears that the more complex the organism the greater is the amount of this "junk".
This is highlighted in this paper
The relationship between non-protein-coding DNA and eukaryotic complexity
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 4/abstract
The above is a direct quote from the above abstract and this evidence is the direct opposite of what was believed to be true, based on Darwinian theory.
Notice also that these intron distributions are non random.
Now this is some the evidence from the non protein coding part of the genome.
What about the other book end--- the protein coding part.
Well it was first expected that the Human genome would contain about 100,000 genes.
Now why would a figure around 100,000 be expected?
Simply because a tiny roundworm has about 20,000 and humans are clearly much more complicated, therefore the, one gene one trait, concept that our good friend Mr Dawkins contended, had to predict much more than in a simple roundworm.
This project has revealed our genome to contain only about 23,000
But that is not all.
Recently researchers have found that a pea aphid has about 34,600 genes and better still, that the water flea has 39,000 genes.
How does Darwinian theory explain this?
Well it can't because the evidence requires a completely different principle of causation.
The only other causation I am aware of is design by some outside agency.
( Craig Venter has demonstrated the principle of that concept.)
If there can be another cause that explains this evidence then it should be explained rather than clinging to a causation that clearly isn't supported by the empirical evidence.
You have quite rightly pointed to areas of evidence that can be examined and all I have done is examine some of that evidence (there is a lot more) and report on it.
Who or what the designer may or may not be is a question that science cannot answer at this point, because that cause appears to sit outside our physical laws.
Defining or trying to understand that cause is a philosophical/religious question that the physical sciences cannot engage with except that scientists have the humility to acknowledge that, as indeed many do.
Sorry for such a long post.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
I believe you have somewhere accused scientists of neglecting supernatural influences. Well, you are right. Scientists must do this. Science would have no power if they didn't.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~aronatas/project ... e.3.12.htm
Concluding the existence of a supernatural cause of anything by an analysis of the evidence amassed by the sciences is untenable. What is tenable is the desire to justify a preconception by selective interpretation. Your strategy is the same as that used by creationists: ignore or discount the majority of human knowledge and try to hammer the remaining minority into the square hole of what you want to be true. I have no problem for you to believe whatever you want (since you don't seem like the type who wishes harm to those who don't share your views), but you are unlikely to win any converts on this particular forum.
You almost sound like someone in transition - raised Christian, intelligent enough to see the absurdity of a theist god who helps certain teams win football games, but sufficiently indoctrinated against the purposelessness of a natural universe. May you continue your journey. As someone said earlier, we all take leaps in choosing what we believe. Some leaps involve probabilistic extrapolation from the known, some involve faith. Scientists, by their nature, choose the former. Theists and deists, by their nature or parents (usually the parents), choose the latter.
I hope to see you on the "other side" some day.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
Would you please answer on your position on double standard when it comes to proof?
You have noted that this paper is dated from 1964, and that since then our understanding on how evolution works has slightly changed. Even if the Darwinian idea is still at the core of the theory of evolution, there are plenty of things that have been better understood and explained with respect to mechanisms and the implication of genetics. This paper has become largely irrelevant because it simply ignores what molecular biology has discovered since it was published. I do not blame the author for that, but using it as a support for your own theory only demonstrate your total and utter lack of understanding of the subject at hand
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
Thank you, rationality is the only way to solve these debates. It is a hot topic but I see no reason in losing rationality over this debate. In fact, I do believe there is good possibility for your beliefs to be true based on the number of sources from which you have drawn support for your argument. I actually took some time to read over Deamer's article because upon skimming it did pose some challenging points. Upon further reading however I could see I wasn't convinced. Although I am no expert in animals, especially cave animals, I don't agree with it much because of several specific problems:
First of all, one of Deamer's underlying premises seems to be that natural selection is goal-directional, through which life should move from simple to complex. I believe this is an error, as natural selection implies that any organism, simple or complex, able to survive in an environment has a better probability of generating offspring with its genes. Technically, degenerate evolution would be very possible through natural selection, but this doesn't happen very often because the loss of sensory organs suggested by Deamer would usually be detrimental in nature. What Deamer hypothesized was that degenerate evolution would be possible in a lab environment, and I believe it would be possible. But of course that wouldn't be NATURAL selection now would it?
From Deamer's article:
I believe what you are arguing is that multiple analogous adaptations pose a problem for Darwinian theory. As I mentioned above, natural selection has no bias with respect to degeneracy. If it works, it works. I believe that over long periods of time, which is what Darwinian theory is partly based on, it would be possible to see such analogous adaptations. This is where I believe faith comes into play, because I have absolutely no idea what could realistically happen over such long periods of time, or "deep time" as some would call it. Perhaps the real argument against Darwinian theory should be on whether such changes can occur over vast periods of time.
Another problem is in this argument. Deamer rebuts Rhoades's suggestion that, given a cave environment, eyes would be lost in cave-dwelling organisms because of the minute energy costs required to maintain eyes. Deamer goes on even to say that if energy expenditure was a problem for cave-dwelling animals, then they would eventually shrink. This is erroneous because for cave-dwelling animals to "shrink" they would have to lose some adaptations, and this would be disadvantageous to their survival. This is from what I'd speculate, however, because I am no expert in cave animals.
What he did here was compare a process that probably occurred in cave animals to a process that probably occurred in the rest of the animal kingdom. As I mentioned above, degenerate evolution could very well be possible through natural selection but it doesn't happen in nature.
The point, I guess, is that Deamer is taking a few bits of Darwinian theory and trying to explain it in a lab environment. But Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, as its name might imply, takes place in nature.
The relation you hold here is that an increase in the NUMBER of genes is an increase in the complexity of an organism. I'd argue that the number doesn't attribute completely to the complexity of the animal. More important factors, aside from the amount of genes, is how the organism expresses it, and WHEN it expresses the genes. To be more specific, there are certain developmental genes I have heard of that are expressed at distinct stages of the organism's development and SMALL changes in the genes can lead to LARGE changes in the organism's morphology. Although I'm sure there are more that exist, the only genes I have been taught about are the Hox genes, commonly studied for their effects on segmentation in Drosophilia.
You'd also ask how the increase in noncoding DNA ties in with this. Well, since a good number of noncoding DNA sequences have been known to REGULATE DNA and thus gene expression, we can speculate that the increase in noncoding DNA may correlate to an increase in regulation mechanisms in humans that allow certain genes to be expressed at precise times allowing for particular physiological functions to happen. Thus, it seems plausible that not only do the number of genes factor into the complexity of an organism, but also the manner (i.e. how much they are expressed) in which they are expressed and when they are expressed. Just because humans have less coding genes doesn't mean they're less complex.
I also apologize for the long post. The larger the post, the more likelihood of error it seems.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
EarthLife [email protected]-Bonding
Purines and pyrimidines are two of the building blocks of nucleic acids. Only two purines and three pyrimidines occur widely in nucleic acids.
Pyrimidine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound similar to benzene and pyridine, containing two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 of the six-member ring.
A purine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound, consisting of a pyrimidine ring fused to an imidazole ring. Purines, including substituted purines and their tautomers, are the most widely distributed kind of nitrogen-containing heterocycle in nature.
Aromaticity ( Kekule, Loschmidt, Thiele) is essential also for the Krebs Cycle, for energy production.
Natural selection is E (energy) temporarily constrained in an m (mass) format.
Natural selection is a universal ubiquitous trait of ALL mass spin formats, inanimate and animate.
Life began/evolved on Earth with the natural selection of inanimate RNA, then of some RNA nucleotides, then arriving at the ultimate mode of natural selection – self replication of RNAs. ALL Earth life is evolved RNAs. The drive and purpose of EarthLife is to enhance RNAs replication, its natural selection.
Aromaticity enables good constraining of energy and good propensity to hydrogen bonding. The address of EarthLife Genesis, of phasing from inanimate to animate natural selection, is Aromaticity. Hydrogen Bonding.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
You will not find that I have anywhere, said that nor have I made any such accusation. I appreciate you used the word "believe" which only goes to show that beliefs can be wrong.
What I have said, and here I paraphrase the summation of all my posts
Scientists should not stray into matters that involve the unnatural or supernatural. Scientists must try and explain matters within the known physical laws.
Explanations beyond physical laws are philosophical.
When the evidence does not support a physical hypothesis then that should be recognised and acknowledged.
Now I do not know of any physical process that can explain the origin of life except that life has only been known to originate from another pre existing life.
That is what science does testify to.
I also do not know of any physical process that can change one species into another quite different species. (definition of species can of course be quite arbitrary.) let's use this forums definition.
I do know that within existing species, variation can and does occur and depend on genetic environmental and dietary factors.
I know of only one example where known physical processes have been used to produce a new species. That is the case where an outside agent has, albeit crudely, designed and changed one life form into another. I of course refer to the Craig Venter team.
No doubt others will follow. They have not created a new life, but simply changed and existing life form into another.
As I understand it the smallest unit of a species is a single cell as is also the smallest unit of a life.
I therefore maintain that any attempts to understand how life arose also by definition would understand how species arose.
I am not aware of any physical process that can or has caused a prokaryote to change into a eukaryote.
Finally I do not know of any physical process that can attach symbolic meaning to any chemical molecules that exist in the various genetic codes that life processes utilise.
I think that pretty well sums up my understanding of where science is at this time on this subject.
Since you started off your psychological analysis of me with an incorrect belief, would you mind terribly if I reserve my judgement on it.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
Cave animals
Patrick oh Patrick, you offer such kind words of encouragement, what can I say? How about starting here
Yes the paper is from 1964.
1) Has it been refuted? If so please provide me with a source.
2) Simply stating that our understanding of evolution has slightly changed is just a statement. Could you please explain in what way has it changed to make this paper irrelevant?
3) You don't blame the author for that but you blame me. That is a delightful little bit of "shoot the messenger" rhetoric.
4) The argument though is that vestigial organs militate against functional design. If they are vestigial then they must have had a use initially, therefore this is an argument for degeneration or atrophy, not one against design. It seems you don't fully understand the nature of this argument.
5) According to Darwinian theory Natural selection is the force, that selects for survival from existing functions. Random mutations are the creative force in Darwinian theory. Since these organs are not necessary for survival Natural selection is not the driving mechanism for their loss. That driving mechanism is a function of increasing entropy and is not a Darwinian mechanism. That is the point Professor Deamer is making.
6) Rhoades (1962) legitimately argues that since less energy is required this make for better survival, hence Natural selection is the force.
7) Deamer counters his argument that this should mean that the cave animals are smaller than the corresponding above ground species, but in his experience there is no appreciable difference in size. He then goes on to cite Vandel (1961) that shows in the case of the blind salamander, in the laval stage, eyes are there and then disappear with maturity. Hope that helps you better understand the principles of Deamer's paper.
btw I have emailed the professor and hopefully will get a response. I will keep you informed, so we can all update our understanding.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
May I refer you to my response to Patrick where I explained my understanding of his paper.
I fully note your comments however can we put this in abeyance until I perhaps get a reply from Professor Deemer
So to your response
Sorry I should have been a bit clearer, I was not expressing my view, I was expressing the view of the researchers. Perhaps if I cited a reference it would have been clearer.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... mber.shtml
The rest of your paragraph I totally agree with.
The point I was making was that evolutionary theory was positing that the increase in complexity was a random happening of the mutation of existing genes, and thereby complexity of phenotype was a result of a greater variety of mutated genes.
We now know that is not the case.
We also now need to ask the additional question.
Since random mutation is the creative force, with natural selection being the selective force
How does this creative force change, not only the function of the genome, but also how the individual genes are expressed, and again when they are expressed?
And even more than that how is the ever changing growth trajectory of the embryo is managed by this random process.
Natural selection has nothing to do with this process. It only comes into play when the environment can act to select one of these changes once they have taken place, to an advantage.
And of course the more complex the organism the more complex these coordinated series of changes have to be.
Now everyone is just making the assumption that this can happen, but the improbability (now I don't wish to go into the theory of probability) of this is so great that even the theory itself recognises it.
Why else is common decent the other fundamental pillar.
Because it only happened once, says the theory.
It is this creative force that I keep challenging.
Science advances in a culture of doubt.
Your second paragraph I agree with.
The more of this so called junk the more regulated is the organism.
But this junk DNA was being (and indeed in some quarters) still being offered up as the refuse of evolutionary processes and was and indeed still is put out as an argument against design.
Now there is more to this junk question but may I leave that to another post.
RSS is now overcoming me.
Re: Theories - Origin of Life
I stumbled over this vivid discussion and cannot resist to interfere...
I think you do not understand the basic concept of schience at all. Wikipedia.com puts it into a nice phrase: "Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." Its all about progression! Scientific data are constantly generated, expanded, revised and sometimes dismissed or refuted. You simply cannot take a single paper, especially an old one, for absolutely granted and ignore all the scientific knowlegde that has been generated since then (what a christian attitude!). That doesn`t make old papers "irrelevant", but in the light of new discoveries quite often much more reasonable explanations can be given for many phenomena. In fact, thats what canalon already tried to explain to you. If you really want to learn about a topic, read recent literature (e.g. reviews).
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text:
Apple Inc.'s departing chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer presided over a sales boom that filled company coffers with a record cash pile. His successor, Luca Maestri, inherits a company stung by slowing growth and increasing scrutiny of how it handles that hoard.
The Italian-born executive is becoming Apple's main money man and liaison to Wall Street in June, at a time when the world's most valuable company is under pressure to reverse a stock slide, ward off activist investors and defend a cash strategy that critics say shields it from paying taxes.
"When you're the CFO of the number one company in the world, you have a pretty big magnifying glass on you," said Laurence Balter, an analyst at Oracle Investment Research, which advises shareholders.
In the largely staid and behind-the-scenes corporate finance world, the CFO job at Apple is among the world's most high profile. Apart from dealing with shareholders, Maestri will manage Apple's spending as it invests in research and development, and buys billions of dollars of equipment and components to manufacture its products. The Cupertino, California-based company, which has $159 billion in cash, also is in the midst of a buyback and dividend plan that will return $100 billion to shareholders.
Maestri will oversee Apple's accounting and regulatory filings, handling of currencies from sales around the world, and debt after the iPhone maker sold $17 billion in bonds last year. He will supervise how Apple handles taxes, which drew the ire of U.S. senators last year for policies that helped the company avoid paying some fees. Maestri also takes the reins of the acquisitions team, which has stepped d its dealmaking.
Apple, which hired Maestri as corporate controller last year, declined to comment or make the 50-year-old executive available. In a March 4 statement announcing Maestri's promotion to CFO, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said, "When we were recruiting for a corporate controller, we met Luca and knew he would become Peter's successor."
Defending Apple is set to be in Maestri's future, as the company has become a target of activist investors such as Carl Icahn and David Einhorn. Both criticized the iPhone maker in the past 18 months for sitting on cash and pushed the company to increase its payouts to shareholders.
Selling Shares
Investors such as Fidelity Investments, BlackRock Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Janus Capital Management have also sold Apple shares in recent months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Maestri, who has an affinity for strong coffee, good wine and Argentinian steak houses, brings international experience to Apple as the company increases sales in China and elsewhere. During his career, Maestri has lived in Italy, Poland, Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil and Germany.
"He's very much a global citizen," said Richard Simonson, executive vice president and CFO of Sabre Holdings Corp., who hired Maestri to work at Nokia Siemens Networks in 2008. Notably, "he knows how to sort through complex situations, and focus on what's important," Simonson said.
Maestri spent the bulk of his career at General Motors Co., culminating in a position as its head finance executive in Europe. His 20-year tenure there came to an end in 2008 just as the company was feeling the brunt of the financial crisis that would send it into bankruptcy in 2009.
At a financial review meeting in Zurich in early 2008, Maestri spoke up so passionately about the company's dire fiscal position and the need to take bold steps to head off the crisis that a colleague, Chris Preuss, asked why the executive was so concerned. Maestri said GM's situation was so dire that Preuss should think about getting a new job.
"He looked at me squarely and said 'This isn't going to end well and you need to think about what you're going to do because Detroit has its head in the ground,'" Preuss, who left GM in 2009 and today works for Ford Motor Co., said in an interview. "It was probably one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten."
Maestri is a tough deal maker, said Fritz Henderson, former GM CEO who was Maestri's boss at the automaker. They worked closely together when the company wound down its relationship with Fiat SpA in 2005, with GM paying $2 billion to end the partnership with the struggling Italian carmaker.
"He was a very tenacious negotiator but he was also a practical guy because he realized he needed to get things done," Henderson said. "'He was considered one of the best rising finance executives in the company.''
Maestri also has years of U.S. experience. After graduating from Luiss University in Rome with a bachelor's degree in economics, he got a master's degree in management science at Boston University. He became a fan of the New York Yankees and is more likely to talk about his kids and sports than work at dinners with colleagues, said Gary Kabureck, a former colleague.
After departing GM in 2008 Maestri went to Nokia Siemens as the networking company restructured its business, and then joined Xerox Inc. as its finance chief in 2011. At Xerox, he worked with CEO Ursula Burns as she shifted the company away from strictly being a maker of photocopy machines to a services business.
''Luca is a stellar finance executive whose contributions have brought great value to the transformation of Xerox into a services enterprise," Burns said in a statement.
In his two years at the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company, Maestri helped integrate the 2009 acquisition of technology services company Affiliated Computer Services. While Xerox had no share repurchase plan in 2010, Maestri instituted a $700 million buyback in 2011 and another for $1.1 billion in 2012. He was adept at navigating the company's culture, a skill that will serve him well at Apple, said Kabureck, who was Xerox's chief accounting officer.
"He understood big organizations have their own culture and speed and way of doing things," Kabureck said.
While Maestri has experience working at companies in crisis or transition, Oppenheimer has been at Apple since 1996 and became CFO in 2004, just as the company went on a roll with a slew of innovative products. The stock soared more than forty-fold during his tenure and he recently joined the board of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Oppenheimer will remain with Apple through the end of September to help with the transition.
Courting Investors
Maestri can build trust with Apple investors by giving more information on the company's plans for the cash on its balance sheet, as well as more detailed financial guidance for the coming quarters, Balter said.
Some of Maestri's responsibilities may be limited. Cook also takes a prominent role with investors, including having dinner with Icahn when the activist criticized Apple last year.
"The most important people at Apple are those that are working on the development of new products," said Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG LLC in New York, who has a buy rating on the stock.
Maestri is excited for the challenge, said Simonson, who spoke to him after Apple announced the promotion.
"He's thrilled he proved to be the choice," Simonson said.
Bloomberg News


text:
The Canadian Opera Company is delighted to be part of the ever-growing support of honeybees, Currently we host seven hives onthe roof of our opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Follow the honeybees' progress on Parlando, with visits and posts from beekeeper Fred Davis!
NEW - Our bee blog has moved!
Visit Parlando for more updates about our honeybees.
There are three types of honeybee: the queen, the worker, and the drone.
There is only one queen per hive. She grows one and a half times larger than the other bees, lives 40 times longer than the workers (up to seven years), and can lay between 1,200 and 2,000 eggs a day, which may be her weight in eggs. Ouch!
Contrary to what might be expected, the queen is selected by the worker bees. Once the current queen dies or becomes less productive, the workers select a worker bee larva to be the new queen. All larvae are fed royal jelly to begin with. Later, their diet is changed to pollen and honey, with only the virgin queens being exclusively fed royal jelly.
When the virgin queen reaches maturity, she ventures out of her cell and seeks out other emerged, and even unemerged virgin queens to fight them to the death. She then ventures out of the hive to breed in a short series of intense sessions with drones (some from other hives to avoid inbreeding). Multiple matings occur in flight and she collects sperm which she stores internally for the rest of her life, using it to fertilize those eggs she chooses to. She then returns to the hive, and if she is accepted by the hive, she becomes their new queen (if the old one has died) or fights the old queen to the death. Sometimes the old queen has already died, driving the workers to quickly bring forth a new queen from her cell. Or the old queen might have been killed by the hive to make room for a new, more egg-productive queen.
During laying, fertilized eggs become female worker bees who cannot reproduce. Unfertilized eggs become male drone bees, who are used for breeding only. The queen decides which egg she will fertilize as she lays it. Each egg is laid by the queen in an individual cell in the wax honeycomb, which is produced by the worker bees.
The workers are the female bees. They live several months during the winter season. But if they are born in the summer, their life span is only up to six weeks long as they literally work themselves to death. Most of the bees in the hive are workers. Workers have a remarkable promotion cycle. As young workers they clean the hive and feed the larvae. When they can no longer produce royal jelly, they move to building the honeycomb. As they get older still they act as receivers, taking nectar and pollen from returning foragers. They also guard the hive. And later still, an older worker will graduate to leaving the hive and becoming a full time forager. All this in about six weeks. Workers indeed!
The drones are the male bee and there are very few of them in the hive. They are fed by the workers and are kept on standby for mating duties with a virgin queen. As they are of no use in the winter, they are expelled from the hive in the fall. They also die after mating. Yikes!
Posted by Gianna Wichelow / in Did you Know? / comments (2) / permalink
Posted by Gianna Wichelow / in Did you Know? / comments (3) / permalink
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Read the nutritional guidelines for the FSC Honeybees Honey!


text:
Back in the postwar era, when Ralph Kramden drove for the Gotham Bus Company in The Honeymooners, inventions enabled progress in the mechanical and chemical arts. Today, computers have largely replaced the chalkboards and drafting tables of yesterday as the principal tools of technological advances.
Over time, many patents issued from the Patent Office covered inventions whose claims required using a computer. On June 19, 2014, however, in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd v. CLS Bank Int'l, the Supreme Court ruled that using a computer does not, standing alone, create an invention eligible for patent protection.
In this ruling, the Court stressed that innovators must pay careful attention to the patentability of the underlying invention rather than the means one employs to achieve it. A higher bar now exists for patent-eligibility of computer-implemented inventions covering business methods centered on basic economic concepts. As this new interpretation is further developed in the courts, this barrier could extend to reach other technological areas.
Section 101 of the patent laws defines those inventions that qualify for patent protection. The Supreme Court has long held that patent rights may not exclude the public from accessing certain "fundamental principles" — those patent-ineligible laws of nature, abstract ideas, and naturally-occurring materials and phenomena that are "part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men."
For decades, the "transformation and reduction of an article to a different state or thing" has been a clue to patentability of a process that did not involve a machine. Courts had been divided about whether using a generic computer — a machine — could transform a fundamental principle into a patent-eligible application.
In Alice, the Supreme Court confirmed that a patent protecting a method of using a computer to manage the risk that only one party to a financial transaction will pay what it owes by using a third party clearinghouse is not valid
The argument before the Court was whether the practice of intermediated settlement — "a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce" — could be transformed into a patent-eligible method. The Court affirmed that the patent claims are invalid, holding that merely requiring the use of a generic computer was insufficient to transform the patent claim from a patent-ineligible abstract idea to a patent-eligible application of that abstract idea.
Innovators in all technological areas should pay attention to two broadly-applicable takeaways from Alice.
The rule in Mayo rules
In Alice, the Court confirmed, once again, that patent eligibility under Section 101 depends upon a two-step inquiry. Step one asks whether the claim is directed to a patent-ineligible fundamental principle. If the answer is yes, then step two examines what other features the claim has that "transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application." As the Court explained in Alice, step two is a
search for an inventive concept—i.e., an element or combination of elements that is sufficient to ensure that patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the ineligible concept itself.
Technology innovators and their counsel must remain vigilant to highlight those additional features that add "significantly more" to a patent claim to avoid rejection or invalidity under Section 101. After Alice, it is clear that a general purpose computer falls far short of this standard for an "inventive concept." But other requirements exist: The additional features must not be "conventional steps," "well known in the art" applied at a "high level of generality."
Determining what additional features are "well known" and "conventional" will depend on the particular field of the invention. But across the board, these requirements could complicate patenting inventions that use new combinations of existing technologies or represent incremental improvements over known products or methods.
The problem is pre-emption
Alice identifies pre-emption as the key concern about patents relating to fundamental principles: the danger that a patent may grant a monopoly over "the basic tools of scientific and technological work."
Broad claims relating to fundamental principles raise the specter of pre-emption. Adding elements to those claims may narrow them sufficiently to add "significantly more" to the fundamental principle and become patent-eligible. On the other hand, adding elements to claims may limit their value if infringement is more difficult to establish and prove.
As an example, the Court points to the invention in Diamond v. Diehr, in which the Arrhenius equation — an otherwise unpatentable mathematical formula — could be applied in an improved method for curing rubber that satisfies Section 101 requirements.
Alice may have opened a new front on the battleground for patent eligibility: Courts must now define the contours of those "abstract ideas" that cannot be patented without "significantly more." Where might such abstractness lie today, where enormous value can be found in collecting, aggregating and synthesizing information? And how long will it be before courts find "advanced" technologies like functional MRI machines and mass spectrometers equivalent to a general purpose computer? Time will tell whether patents can sustain future innovation in an era defined by computer-aided discovery.


text:
Packer roundup: All eyes on Seneca Wallace
For just the third time since 1992, somebody besides Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers will start at quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.
The man tasked with taking the wheel of one of the league's most potent offenses is veteran Seneca Wallace, who wasn't particularly inspiring after having his number called Monday night against the Chicago Bears.
Wallace's career numbers don't sparkle, either.
His career totals of 4,922 yards and 31 touchdowns would make a good season for some quarterbacks, and his 19 interceptions and 59.1 percent completion rate leave a lot to be desired. His record as a starter is 6-15, though it should be said he made many of those 21 starts with putrid Cleveland Browns squads surrounding him.
Wallace gets the opportunity to keep the Packer train—which might've been headed for another NFC North crown before Monday night—on the tracks for the next few weeks.
Make no mistake about it, he'll need a lot of help to do so. Eddie Lacy might have to contribute even more than he has already this season, and the defense will have to put its own poor performance on Monday night behind it and slow down a Philadelphia Eagles offense that seems to thrive away from home (the Eagles haven't won for their home crowd yet, but are 4-1 on the road).
Quarterback Nick Foles tossed seven touchdown passes last week in Oakland, and running back LeSean McCoy is among league leaders with 777 rushing yards heading into Sunday's game.
For more on the team's defensive woes and Wallace's transition to the starting role, check out the Packer coverage from The Gazette's partners at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
GREEN BAY—During a four-game winning streak that began with a 22-9 decision over the Detroit Lions, the Green Bay Packers' defense climbed up the charts, going from 28th in the NFL in yards allowed all the way up to 11th.
In those four games, it allowed 15 points per game and let only one team to top the 100-yard rushing mark.
It seemed like the defense had come out of its journey into the abyss, a two-year dark period for coordinator Dom Capers in which his unit ranked 22nd last season and 32nd in 2011. There was even lots of talk about how much more physical the defense was even with key members such as linebackers Clay Matthews and Nick Perry laid up with injuries.
Then came the Chicago Bears bombshell Monday night. Read more ...
GREEN BAY--The last time Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy had to prepare a backup quarterback to start a game, he stopped very early in the process and reminded himself of something.
The objective wasn't to get Matt Flynn to play like Aaron Rodgers, but rather to put Flynn in the best position to beat the New England Patriots.
"Well, going back to that experience, it really hit me on Monday, the day after the game (in which Rodgers got hurt), knowing exactly what needed to be done," McCarthy said Wednesday. "And it's an experience I think we can draw from, and that's really not to overthink it. Read more ...
GREEN BAY--The 16 million viewers who tuned into "Monday Night Football" likely do not believe in Seneca Wallace. They watched a backup quarterback stumble through four grisly quarters of football.
But coach Mike McCarthy? The one in charge? He left no room for speculation Tuesday.
With Aaron Rodgers out, Wallace is in. Case closed. Wallace will prepare as the Green Bay Packers' starting quarterback this week. Read more ...


text:
A Pharmacodynamic/Pharmacokinetic Study of Aleglitazar in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus on Treatment With Lisinopril
This study has been completed.
Hoffmann-La Roche
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
First Posted: July 20, 2011
Last Update Posted: November 2, 2016
Information provided by (Responsible Party):
Hoffmann-La Roche
- Full Text View
- Tabular View
- No Study Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
No Study Results Posted on ClinicalTrials.gov for this Study
|Study Status:
|This study has been completed.
|Study Completion Date:
|October 2012
|Primary Completion Date:
|October 2012 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)


text:
Athletic Hall of Fame Nominations
Thank you in advance for assisting the UC San Diego Athletic Department and the Hall of Fame Committee in submitting nominee information. This is a very important part of the process and we appreciate you taking time to fill out the form completely. PLEASE NOTE that for nominations 10 years must have passed following their last year at the University. Staff and Coaches can be nominated earlier if they have served for over 25 consecutive years. If you have any questions please email email@example.com.
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text:
Salt: The Only Kind of Rocks Eaten by Humans (Part I)
Most folks know that salt is somehow critical to human survival. However, it wasn't until reading Mark Kurlansky's book, Salt, that I became aware of just how integral this substance is to the healthy functioning of our bodies and, consequently, the major role it has played in human affairs throughout much of recorded history. As far as our bodies are concerned, the average adult human contains just over a half pound of salt or, as Kurlansky calculates, roughly 3 or 4 salt shakers. However, in the natural course of things, we lose this salt and must take action to replenish it.
Without salt, we get weak, develop headaches, progressing to light-headedness and then to nausea. Ultimately, if deprived long enough, we die. However, we never explicitly crave salt. Before animal husbandry was practiced, humans ate wild animals and were able to get enough salt naturally through this meat. However, once humans began raising animals on farms, the animals were no longer free to roam and find sources of salt for themselves. As animals also require salt in their diets (e.g. a cow needs about 10x the amount of an adult human), early man began to take an interest in sourcing salt directly. It is unclear how we, as humans, first became aware of our salt dependency but it seems that by following the trails of salt-seeking herbivores, early man was able to track down sources of salt, be it in liquid or rock form.
Salt became one of the earliest traded commodities and, for millennia, it remained a major force in international trade. Today, given our knowledge of both chemistry and geology, sourcing salt is no longer as challenging. Straight up salt at the supermarket is pretty cheap and most of us consume way more salt than the minimum our bodies require. That said, not all salts are the same and there is a difference between what one generally finds at the supermarket and naturally harvested salts.
In her book, CookWise, Shirley Corriher explains what makes table salt and sea salt different. To summarize her excellent description: most table salts are "dense cubes." In contrast, salts that are harvested from the surface of a body of water (fleur de sel, Maldon, etc.) are four-sided crystals. As moisture evaporates from a salt flat, the salt crystals begin to take shape as hollow squares. This square then sinks a little bit and another slightly smaller, four-sided square grows on top of that. Gradually, a hollow pyramid structure is built.
Corriher relates that the difference between table salt and sea salt is like the "difference between an ice-cube and a snowflake." According to her research, "about 90 percent of granular salt dropped onto an inclined surface bounces off, while 95 percent of the flaky pyramid form sticks to the surface." The other main difference between granular table salt and sea salt – the former is almost purely sodium chloride (i.e. salt) whereas the latter contains sodium chloride and other minerals. The variety and quantity of those minerals depends on where the salt is sourced from. Not only does this lead to variations in flavor and appearance but, as Corriher points out, additional minerals helps encourage gluten development in bread baking.
Bread was an important early food staple for humans and salt was important not only for its mineral content but also because it played a critical role in controlling yeast activity. Before the advent of canning and refrigeration, salt was also critical for the preservation of food, another reason why this commodity was a major driver of international trade. Salt is used to cure prosciutto and salami (the former through exterior application, the latter by being mixed into the ground meat), preserved lemons and vegetables and to dry fish, among other foodstuffs. In fact, another book by Mark Kurlanksy, Cod, details how the ability to preserve that fish allowed humans to embark on lengthy sea voyages and explore the world.
In summary – salt is not only critical to our diets but it has played a critical role in our collective history. For more interesting details on the exact extent of its role, definitely check out Mr. Kurlansky's book – I have only been able to relate a few of the interesting tidbits he was able to uncover. And, stay tuned for my second salt installment as I taste through some of the more unusual salts we have at the shop!
April 8, 2011: For part II of this post, please click here.


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River Park
5100 N. Francisco Ave. Chicago, Illinois 60625
(312) 742-7516
Fee: $5 per person (maximum of 24 persons)
Age Range: Adults and children 10+
This tour will focus on the ecology of the Chicago River and includes water quality testing, a habitat survey, and a history of the Chicago River prior to canoeing. River interpretation, equipment and instruction provided by Friends of the Chicago River.
Adult accompany child in the canoe.
For registration:
Activity Number 48952


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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has formed two enforcement task forces aimed at rooting out improper accounting and fraud at small companies, the agency said.
The SEC's enforcement division also created a Center for Risk and Quantitative Analytics to identify risks and threats that could harm investors, the agency said in a statement today.
"By directing resources, skill, and experience to high-impact areas, we will increase the potential for uncovering financial-statement and microcap fraud early and bring more cases aimed at deterring these types of unlawful activity," co-director of enforcement Andrew Ceresney said in the statement.
The financial reporting task force will concentrate on publicly filed statements, issuer reporting, and audit failures, the SEC said. The group will also focus on a review of financial restatements and revisions. The group will be led by David Woodcock, head of the SEC's regional office in Fort Worth, Texas, and will work in consultation with the enforcement division's chief accountant, according to the statement.
In fiscal 2012, the SEC brought the fewest accounting-fraud cases since at least 2003.


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Probe launched after hospital trust sent hundreds of suspected cancer patients home
Two managers have been suspended after a hospital trust admitted discharging hundreds of suspected cancer patients by mistake.
West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust said at least one person might have died as a result of the errors, and 121 patients are yet to have their cases reviewed.
A £40,000 external investigation is under way.
In one case where a patient died, the trust said it was thought a delay in seeing them might have contributed to their death.
The trust is in the process of contacting the family of a second patient who has since died. That patient had advanced cancer at the stage the initial referral was made.
In another case, a patient had their diagnosis delayed due to errors but their cancer was found at the earliest stage.
Overall, 810 people have had their cases reviewed. Of these, 686 have been told there are no clinical concerns about the care they received.
The trust is made up of Hemel Hempstead Hospital, Watford General Hospital and St Albans City Hospital.
The mistakes came to light when new managers found flaws in the process for patients being seen after referral by their GP or dentist.
Patients who missed their first appointment and were recorded as not showing up were discharged by the hospital. NHS rules say patients should always be offered a second appointment.
The patients had been referred for urgent appointments by doctors between January 2010 and November 2013.
The trust announced today that a £40,000 external review is being carried out by four authorities, including NHS England and the Trust Development Authority.
It said it had offered patients "our apologies for any anxiety and distress" caused by the events and had implemented a new IT system to track each patient's appointment, missed appointments and cancellations.
Trust chief executive Samantha Jones said: "It is absolutely clear that the trust was not always following the correct administrative processes for these patients and we let them down.
"These concerns date back a number of years and were identified as part of the new management team's commitment to improve the way we administer and manage patient care.
"I would like to apologise to each and every patient who has been affected and particularly to the relatives of those who have since died.
"We have of course made significant changes to help prevent this ever happening again and will share the outcome of our investigations with those affected and with the wider public."
Geoff Brown, chief executive of Hertfordshire Healthwatch, said: "We were of course very concerned to hear about this incident and it will undoubtedly cause upset and distress for many patients and their families.
"The trust's management team has kept us informed during the review and we are pleased to have helped them in shaping the communications they have sent to patients and their families.
"We are confident they are working hard to support people who are concerned or worried and hope to see a speedy conclusion for the 121 patients whose cases are still being reviewed."
Hemel Hempstead Conservative MP Mike Penning said: "I am shocked to learn that Hemel Hempstead cancer patients have been allowed to slip through the net due to the incorrect use of procedures. They have been badly let down and it is very upsetting.
"A national review is needed to make sure that the problem is not being repeated elsewhere and that no more patients are let down in this way.
"I commend current chief executive Samantha Jones and her team for discovering the problem and facing it head-on to ensure that no more patients suffer the same breakdown in their care."
The trust said it is "confident" it has contacted everyone affected by the errors but anyone concerned should contact their GP or call the trust's information line on 01923 217100.