Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
Well, here we are. It's happening. We're officially talking about setting up a human colony on Mars. Not only is this very real, it's something you can be part of. You don't have to leave the planet to get your extra-terrestrial fix though, as our two other stories demonstrate. This is alt-week.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden is scolding Republicans in Congress, telling Democrats in South Carolina that the new Republican Party is down on America.
Biden is questioning what Republicans don't understand about the U.S. and the people who built the country and fought to defend it.
He says the one thing all Democrats have in common is an absolute commitment to the middle class.
Biden spoke Friday night at an annual fundraising dinner for the South Carolina Democratic Party.
He says he knows his appearance will generate buzz about whether he's getting ready for a presidential run. South Carolina usually holds one of the first primary contests and is a frequent stop for potential candidates.
But Biden says he came to South Carolina to support Democratic congressman James Clyburn.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/biden-sc-republicans-down-america-010000951.html
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By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK (Reuters) - At first blush the two leading U.S. stock exchanges won a sweeping victory this week in a long-running legal battle over market data - the stock quotes, share prices and other trading information that are highly prized in the electronic marketplace.
But a ruling by the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit may also have opened the door for the Internet companies, brokers and others in the case to achieve a decade-old goal of cutting the fees the exchanges charge for the data.
The court ruled in a decision earlier this week it had no jurisdiction over a case brought by the NetCoalition of some 20 Internet companies, including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, and the Securities Industry and Finance Markets Association, a 600-member lobby for brokers, bankers and asset managers.
The decision appeared to slam the door on the petitioners and remove a potential obstacle to efforts by the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market to offset sharp drops in revenue from stock transactions by boosting market data sales.
But the court did offer a path for Sifma and the NetCoalition group to mount a new battle, several people close to the case said.
The court indicated the Securities Exchange Act, which governs exchanges and their responsibilities as self-regulatory organizations, requires that the exchanges provide for the "equitable allocation" of reasonable fees, among other dues and charges.
The petitioners have argued the exchanges are effectively monopolies and competition is not sufficient to restrain prices.
"I intend to submit a ... petition," said Roger Blanc, a lawyer with Willkie Farr who represented the NetCoalition, the name by which the case is also called. "As soon as we can put it together, we'll be back before the circuit court."
The case is notable because of the importance of market data in an electronic market that relies on "signal processing," the analysis of data by high-speed computers, to trade.
Sifma and the NetCoalition had sought judicial review of the proprietary data both NYSE and Nasdaq sell after the Securities and Exchange Commission let stand almost all their filings for new schedules and higher prices for market data in recent years.
The petitioners challenged the SEC over more than a dozen filings, saying the fees were exorbitant and regulators had abdicated their duties to ensure data fees were "fee and reasonable," a loosely defined standard the agency must uphold.
Four of the complaints were combined before the appeals court, which has oversight of the SEC, and the two exchanges with the regulators provided a joint opinion in the case.
Market data has been a thorn in the side of the SEC for years, with regulators unable to resolve the issue despite a series of high-profile hearings and studies from 1999 to 2005.
A former senior SEC official said market data is highly contentious with no easy answer.
Although the appeals court said the Dodd-Frank act stripped it of jurisdiction in the case, the court left intact its August 2010 ruling that there must be evidence that competition is constraining the fees the exchanges charge for the data.
The court also said the exchanges cannot enforce fee rules that are inconsistent with the exchange act, and said fees need to be tied to "some type of cost-based" standard to guard against excessive profits.
The latter point could be a boon for the petitioners' cause. They have long contended the cost of producing the data is negligible and the exchanges charge far in excess of its cost.
"We are pleased that the court has affirmed our ability to provide high-quality data at reasonable rates to vendors who profit from reselling the data to their customers," a spokesman for the Nasdaq said. The NYSE declined to comment.
The NYSE and Nasdaq presented academic studies to bolster their position that competition exists for market data, and they have strongly resisted any cost analysis of their data.
The Nasdaq's chief financial officer has been telling analysts that market data is an "extremely high-margin" business. Revenue from the U.S. sale of proprietary data at the Nasdaq has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of about 10.8 percent since 2007, a period in which data usage has exploded.
The emphasis on market data as a profit center is misplaced, according to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt. The exchanges are trying to staunch their hemorrhaging and charging for data is purely a short-term solution to a long-term problem, he said.
A good portion of market data is public and should not be proprietary as the exchanges see it, Pitt said in an interview before the court's ruling this week. Allowing data to be available only for those who can afford it will create hard-to-justify market dislocations, he warned.
"The question is when you've allowed people to treat market data as proprietary for so long, how do you justify making a shift and what accommodations do you make?" Pitt said.
The case is NetCoalition and Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association v Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit; No. 10-1421.
(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-court-ruling-may-offer-path-market-data-163932265.html
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In this Thursday, May 2, 2013, photo, traders gather at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stock markets edged higher on Friday May 3, 2013 ahead of the release of the U.S. government's monthly unemployment report, a key measure of the health of the world's largest economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
In this Thursday, May 2, 2013, photo, traders gather at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stock markets edged higher on Friday May 3, 2013 ahead of the release of the U.S. government's monthly unemployment report, a key measure of the health of the world's largest economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
In this Sunday April 8, 2013, photo, Mary Ma, a bartender at Revel, Atlantic City N.J.'s newest casino, pours a drink at one of the casino's bar. The Institute for Supply Management issues its U.S. non-manufacturing (service-sector) index for April on Friday, May 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Stock futures rose Friday after the April jobs report showed unemployment hitting a four-year low.
After a dismal report in March, the Labor Department said that employers added 165,000 jobs added in April, and upwardly revised figures for the previous two months eased fears that the economic recovery had stalled.
Dow Jones industrial futures rose 113 points to 14,873. S&P futures added 10.2 points to 1,602.50. Nasdaq futures rose 21.50 points to 2,923.50.
Trading before the report had been very light, with markets placing so much weight on the Labor Department report.
There was an average of 208,000 jobs created each month from November through April. That tops the 138,000 jobs added in the previous six months.
Also out Friday are the Institute for Supply Management's index on service companies and the Commerce report on factory orders.
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In a study using mice, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that a hormone, adrenomedullin, plays a crucial role in preventing the pregnancy complication preeclampsia. Surprisingly, this hormone protects women from preeclampsia when emitted by the fetus, not the mother, during the most critical times in pregnancy.
"We've identified the fact that the baby is important in protecting the mom from preeclampsia," said the study's senior author, Kathleen M. Caron, Ph.D., Assistant Dean for Research at the UNC School of Medicine and an associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology. "If the baby's cells are not secreting this hormone, the mother's blood vessels don't undergo the dilation that they should."
Preeclampsia affects roughly one in fifteen pregnancies. An important characteristic of the condition is that blood vessels in the placenta fail to enlarge, or dilate, to accommodate increased blood flow to the fetus. Untreated, it can threaten the life of both mother and baby.
"We really don't know that a pregnant woman is going to get preeclampsia until she has it," said Caron. Because the condition has numerous risk factors and causes, it's difficult for doctors to know which patients are at highest risk. "Identifying molecules that could predict preeclampsia would be really important."
The researchers studied mice that were genetically programmed to produce either reduced or increased levels of adrenomedullin. The study revealed that in a normal pregnancy, the fetus secretes adrenomedullin into the placenta during the second trimester, signaling special cells called "natural killer cells" to help dilate the mother's blood vessels and allow more blood to flow to the growing fetus.
The study is one of the first to identify an important chemical message sent from fetus to mother in the womb. Scientists understand more about the mom's side of the 'chemical conversation' that goes on between mother and baby, but much of the hormonal signaling in the placenta remains a mystery.
By identifying the key role of adrenomedullin, the research could pave the way to new methods for detecting and preventing preeclampsia. For example, adrenomedullin levels could potentially be used as a biomarker, or early indicator, to identify which patients might be predisposed to the condition. "Having a biomarker would be wonderful?it could allow the physician to manage a woman differently in the early part of her pregnancy," said Caron.
As a next step, the researchers plan to build upon their mouse studies to examine patterns of adrenomedullin levels and preeclampsia in pregnant women.
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This paper was published online ahead of print on May 1, 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). The paper will appear in the June 2013 print edition.
University of North Carolina Health Care: http://www.med.unc.edu
Thanks to University of North Carolina Health Care for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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If you use iBooks to purchase and download books to your iPhone or iPad, you have a very easy way to find exactly what you're looking for using the table of contents. It allows you to jump through chapters, read summaries in some cases, and more.
If you're new to iBooks, follow along to find out how to quickly navigate a book using the table of contents on your iPhone and iPad.
That's all there is to it. You'll be taken directly to that section immediately. You can always return to the table of contents again at any time by tapping on the same icon.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/O6JGSCV9pJE/story01.htm
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