Archive for the ‘More’ Category
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New estimates show that least 56,000 people become infected with the AIDS virus every year in the United States — 40 percent more than previous calculations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday.
The CDC stressed that actual infection rates have not risen but said better methods of measuring newly diagnosed infections and extrapolating these to the general population led to the higher estimates.
“CDC’s first estimates from this system reveal that the HIV epidemic is — and has been — worse than previously known. Results indicate that approximately 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in the United States in 2006,” the CDC said in a statement.
“This figure is roughly 40 percent higher than CDC’s former estimate of 40,000 infections per year, which was based on limited data and less precise methods.”
The CDC said the epidemic has been stable since the late 1990s, “though the number of new HIV infections remains unacceptably high.”
“The analysis shows that new infections peaked in the mid-1980s at approximately 130,000 infections per year and reached a low of about 50,000 in the early 1990s,” it said.
Dr. Kevin Fenton, who heads the CDC’s AIDS branch, said 15,000 to 18,000 Americans die every year of AIDS.
“The data really confirm that there is a severe impact of this epidemic among gay and bisexual men in the United States … as well as black men and women,” Fenton said in a telephone interview. Continued…
Hot Docs: Iraq Can’t Spend Its Oil Money, Raising the Retirement Age, and More
Posted on: August 6, 2008
Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq. A new Government Accountability Office report looks at Iraq’s spending patterns and its windfall oil revenues. The agency notes that Iraq’s government has run massive budget surpluses over the past two years and outlines some difficulties local officials have faced in trying to spend these funds on capital improvements.
Actuaries Advocate Raising Social Security’s Retirement Age. The American Academy of Actuaries recommends an immediate increase in the retirement age to help alleviate strain on the Social Security system. The professional organization attributes the crunch to an increase in longevity over the past several decades.
Screening for Prostate Cancer: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts convened under government auspices, issued new recommendations about who should be screened for prostate cancer. The new advice discourages screening for men over 75.
Kids’ Meals: Obesity on the Menu. The Center for Science in the Public Interest evaluates the nutritional content of children’s menus at 25 popular fast food and restaurant chains, finding, unsurprisingly, that many choices are high in calories, fat, and sodium.
One Year Progress Report: the Department’s Comprehensive National Security Oversight Initiative.
Hot Docs: Iraq Can’t Spend Its Oil Money, Raising the Retirement Age, and More
Posted on: August 6, 2008
Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq. A new Government Accountability Office report looks at Iraq’s spending patterns and its windfall oil revenues. The agency notes that Iraq’s government has run massive budget surpluses over the past two years and outlines some difficulties local officials have faced in trying to spend these funds on capital improvements.
Actuaries Advocate Raising Social Security’s Retirement Age. The American Academy of Actuaries recommends an immediate increase in the retirement age to help alleviate strain on the Social Security system. The professional organization attributes the crunch to an increase in longevity over the past several decades.
Screening for Prostate Cancer: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts convened under government auspices, issued new recommendations about who should be screened for prostate cancer. The new advice discourages screening for men over 75.
Kids’ Meals: Obesity on the Menu. The Center for Science in the Public Interest evaluates the nutritional content of children’s menus at 25 popular fast food and restaurant chains, finding, unsurprisingly, that many choices are high in calories, fat, and sodium.
One Year Progress Report: the Department’s Comprehensive National Security Oversight Initiative.
- In: - | and | Cellphones | Gets | Invasive | More | MOVES | New York Times | Spam | To
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Taber Lightfoot sought reimbursement for cellphone spam.
Cellphones have become consumers’ most personal technological devices. Some industry executives, along with consumer groups and security experts, are concerned that unwanted text messages on phones will be an even greater headache than unwanted computer messages.
Cellphone spam is particularly annoying to its recipients because it is more invasive — announcing itself with a beep — and can be costly.
Taber Lightfoot, an assistant director for new media at the Yale School of Management, is among those who have paid for the privilege of receiving cellphone spam.
“I was at work and I got so annoyed,” she said of the first burst of three messages she received. She got another burst two days later.
“That is when I called Verizon and demanded they reimburse me $1.60 for eight text messages,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was my money.”
American consumers are expected to receive an estimated 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, according to Ferris Research, based in San Francisco, which tracks mobile messaging trends. That is nearly double what they received in 2006.
Of course that is a small percentage of the overall number of messages: an industry survey showed that consumers in the United States sent and received about 48 billion text messages in December alone. But for many people who are charged as much as 20 cents for an incoming message or are interrupted in the middle of dinner, even one is too many.
“The reason this really burns people up is because they have to pay for messages they don’t want, and they shouldn’t have to,” said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, a nonprofit group.
Toyota plans to go full-bore with third-generation Prius.
When someone tosses around the word “hybrid”, one vehicle typically first comes to mind: the Toyota Prius. The first generation model was introduced in ‘00 as a ’01 model while the second generation model came out in ’03 as an ’04 model.
The original Prius got Americans talking about hybrid vehicles, but it was the second generation model that really set things in motion for Toyota and its aim to equip the bulk of its lineup with hybrid technology. The second generation Prius — classified as a mid-size sedan — manages to achieve EPA ratings of 48 MPG/45 MPG city/highway thanks to its 1.5-liter gasoline engine and its hybrid-electric system.
Toyota is looking to boost the appeal and size of the third generation Prius which is due to be unveiled at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show. The vehicle will catch the disease that seems to afflict every new vehicle redesign these days: further increases in exterior dimensions. According to AutoObserver, the next Prius will gain roughly four inches in length and an inch in width.
The larger Prius will also be powered by a new 1.8 liter gasoline engine. Power will increase from 75 HP today to around 100 HP. This will push the combined gasoline engine/Hybrid Synergy Drive combination to 160 HP. The increased displacement should allow the third generation Prius to accelerate faster and should squash any performance complaints leveled against the current model.
As stated in previous DailyTech articles, the third generation Prius will continue using nickel-metal hydride batteries for its initial run. Toyota will switch over to more efficient lithium-ion batteries as soon as performance, safety, and production concerns are ironed out. The use of lithium-ion batteries should also allow for better packing efficiencies and a longer driving range when operating in electric-only mode.
- In: Find | Forms | Google | Googlebot | More | Pages | Submitting
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The deep web is a term referring to all the kinds of pages that are live on the web, but not indexed in search engines for some reason or other. For instance, traditionally search engines mostly follow links in HTML, but from what we know they don’t understand JavaScript (yet) or submit forms. Now Google announced that they have started to experiment with submitting forms for some “high quality sites” by entering words picked from the site into the form’s text boxes, and by selecting different radio buttons, select boxes or checkboxes. Then when the Googlebot determines that web pages found in the results to that submission are valid, “interesting” and unique, they may add them to their search results index.
Google notes that they only do this form submission for “GET” forms. A form using GET results in a parametrized URL like example.com/show?foo=bar. The guidelines for webmasters are that a GET request should never actually change data on the server, like trigger a user registraton or something; for such things, webmasters should use POST, which the Googlebot will not submit. Google also note that they “omit any forms that have a password input or that use terms commonly associated with personal information such as logins, userids, contacts, etc.” Plus, Google say that pages they find will not reduce the PageRank of other pages on the site.
With this move, Google digs a bit deeper than before which may result in more relevant results for searchers, and a smaller “deep web.” And if webmasters misconfigure their scripts or robots.txt files so their site goes against net standards, it may also result in a bit of new confusion for some. On the other hand, this move by Google also has the potential to help webmasters who have such misconfigurations, especially those who aren’t very knowledgeable about web accessibility or SEO, and who don’t put up crawlable links to all their sub-pages (and in reverse, if Googlebot continues to be smarter about what it crawls, in the long run some web developers may also see less incentive to remove small inaccessibilities on their site).
[Thanks Miss Universe! Sketch drawn by MMOArt.]
- In: Announces | Anticlimax | API’s | More | Open | YouTube
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Erick got all excited, but in the end it was a bit of an anticlimax. YouTube’s big announcement today is more open API’s that will allow developers to upload videos and video responses from any where.
From the YouTube Blog
:
We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible…Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.
For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause….
The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.
If anyone won the iPod, Erick will let you know in the morning.
| Website: | www.youtube.com |
| Location: | San Bruno, California, United States |
| Founded: | February 1, 2005 |
| Acquired: | On October 1, 2006 by Google for $1.6B in Cash |
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on http://www.YouTube.com and… Learn More
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