Apple, Google, Amazon, smartphone makers sign privacy accord
Apple, Google, Amazon, smartphone makers sign privacy accord A box from Amazon.com is pictured on the porch of a house in Golden, Colorado July 23, 2008. Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:48pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Six of the world’s top consumer technology firms have agreed to provide greater privacy disclosures before users download applications in order to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, California’s attorney general said on Wednesday. The agreement binds Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and Hewlett-Packard — and developers on their platforms — to disclose how they use private data before an app may be downloaded, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said. “Your personal privacy should not be the cost of using mobile apps, but all too often it is,” said Harris. Currently 22 of the 30 most downloaded apps do not have [...]
Samsung says sales of Galaxy S II phones top 20 mln
Samsung says sales of Galaxy S II phones top 20 mln SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co Ltd<005930.KS>, which emerged as the world’s top smartphone maker last year, said on Thursday that sales of its flagship Galaxy S II topped 20 million handsets since its launch in April last year. Sales of predecessor Galaxy S, introduced in 2010 and at the heart of bruising global patent disputes with arch-rival Apple Inc , exceeded 22 million, the company said in a statement. Apple sold 93 million iPhones last year, nearly doubling sales from a year earlier, while Samsung raised smartphone sales nearly fourfold to 95 million, according to research firm IHS iSuppli. (Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Chris Lewis) Samsung says sales of Galaxy S II phones top 20 mln
US advisers back experimental obesity pill
US advisers back experimental obesity pill SILVER SPRING, Maryland (Reuters) – Experimental obesity drug Qnexa won the backing of U.S. health advisors on Wednesday, raising hopes for approval of the first prescription weight-loss pill in 13 years. Vivus Inc’s Qnexa was one of three promising obesity drugs rejected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the past two years over safety concerns. It is the first to come back up for review after more extensive clinical trials, as public health officials urge the FDA to consider a medical treatment for a condition that affects nearly one-third of Americans. A panel of outside experts to the FDA voted 20-2 to recommend approval of Qnexa, saying they were convinced that the benefits it offers in treating obesity outweighed the potential heart risks and birth defects associated with the drug. They did say Vivus should conduct a study on possible heart problems [...]
Categories: Technology Tags: advisers, back, Experimental, Obesity, Pill
Colonoscopy Prevents Death, a Study Affirms
Colonoscopy Prevents Death, a Study Affirms A new study provides what independent researchers call the best evidence yet that colonoscopy — perhaps the most unloved cancer screening test — prevents deaths. Although many people have assumed that colonoscopy must save lives because it is so often recommended, strong evidence has been lacking until now. In patients tracked for as long as 20 years, the death rate from colorectal cancer was cut by 53 percent in those who had the test and whose doctors removed precancerous growths, known as adenomatous polyps, researchers reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The test examines the inside of the intestine with a camera-tipped tube. “For any cancer screening test, reduction of cancer-related mortality is the holy grail,” said Dr. Gina Vaccaro, a gastrointestinal oncologist at the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University who was not involved in the research. “This [...]
Categories: Technology Tags: Affirms, Colonoscopy, death, Prevents, Study
Plastic surgery takes average 7 years off face: study
Plastic surgery takes average 7 years off face: study (Reuters) – Wondering how young you’ll look after that face lift? Now there’s a study to help you figure out. Plastic surgery procedures took an average of seven years off patients’ appearance, with more extensive facial surgeries turning the clock back even further, researchers writing in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery said. While the goal of surgery is to restore a more youthful and yet natural appearance, doctors haven’t had the data before to provide a good estimate to their patients of just how much younger they’d look after face lifts, forehead lifts and eyelid work, they added. “It’s not the numbers that are important so much as the trend,” cautioned Nitin Chauhan, a doctor from the University of Toronto, who worked on the study. “Everybody has different objectives in mind (for surgery) and everybody has a different pre-operative state,” [...]
H-P Profit Falls 44% as Revenue Slips
H-P Profit Falls 44% as Revenue Slips BY BEN WORTHEN Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman, in her first five months at the troubled company, has tried to rally its customers, investors and employees. Now she says it is time to tackle a tougher issue: How to get H-P growing again. In a conference call on Wednesday, Ms. Whitman made some of her first comments since joining H-P in September about how she intends to push the technology company out of its slump. While she didn’t unveil a detailed plan, she offered a broad picture of her plans including cutting costs and improving the performance of H-P’s existing businesses. Over … BY BEN WORTHEN Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman, in her first five months at the troubled company, has tried to rally its customers, investors and employees. Now she says it is time to tackle a tougher issue: How [...]
Categories: Technology Tags: falls, Profit, revenue, slips
Microsoft files EU complaint over Google, Motorola
Microsoft files EU complaint over Google, Motorola By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS | Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:56am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Microsoft called on EU antitrust regulators on Wednesday to investigate Motorola Mobility, saying the U.S. phone maker was trying to block sales of its Windows PCs, its Xbox game consoles and other products. “Earlier today, Microsoft filed a formal competition law complaint with the European Commission against Motorola Mobility,” Microsoft’s deputy general counsel Dave Heiner wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products,” he said. Last week, the European Commission and the U.S. Justice Department approved Google’s $ 12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Microsoft files EU complaint over Google, Motorola
Santarus, Depomed settle dispute with Lupin
Santarus, Depomed settle dispute with Lupin (Reuters) – Santarus Inc and Depomed Inc said they settled a patent dispute with generic drugmaker Lupin Ltd that will allow the Indian company to launch copycat version of their diabetes drug Glumetza by 2016. Lupin could start selling the generic drug on February 1, 2016, or earlier under certain circumstances. Last month, Lupin said it received tentative approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for generic Glumetza. Santarus shares were up 2.45 percent at $ 4.60 in extended trade. They closed at $ 4.50 on Wednesday on the Nasdaq. Depomed shares closed at $ 6.38. (Reporting by Anand Basu in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel) Santarus, Depomed settle dispute with Lupin
Volunteers Offer Salamanders a Chance to Mate
Volunteers Offer Salamanders a Chance to Mate James Patterson for The New York Times Tom Mann, a zoologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, holds a spotted salamander that he was helping to cross a road. Salamander people are special people. Consider Tom and Debora Mann, biologists in their early 60s who live in a little town near Jackson, Miss. When it rains hard at night, they rush to a dark stretch of the Natchez Trace Parkway and start scooping salamanders into quart-size freezer containers. Then (and this is not the premise for a joke), they help them cross the road. Most rainy nights during the late winter and early spring, dozens — sometimes even hundreds — of salamanders, generally three to nine inches long, try to get from their burrows on one side of the road to seasonal ponds on the other to mate. The salamanders, [...]
Categories: Technology Tags: chance, Mate, Offer, Salamanders, volunteers
Not so fast: Loose wire led to stunning, faster-than-light particle finding
Not so fast: Loose wire led to stunning, faster-than-light particle finding A loose connection between a timer and a computer led some of the world’s smartest particle physicists to conclude that certain tiny particles called neutrinos moved faster than the speed of light — a declaration that shocked the science world and would have called into questions Einstein’s theories. Citing sources familiar with the experiment, Science magazine’s website reported Wednesday that the 60-nanoseconds discrepancy that led to the startling speed conclusion came from a bad connection in a fiber optic cable connecting a GPS receiver (used to correct the timing of the neutrinos’ flight) and a computer. After tightening the connection and then remeasuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the cable, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed, the website said. (More data will be needed to confirm this hypothesis, the [...]
Categories: Technology Tags: fast, fasterthanlight, Finding, Loose, Particle, Stunning, wire
