Newspapers Online 08-23-2013 | Education Obama’s

"He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much," Sandberg said of the 2007 meeting that lasted several hours with the chief operating officer of Apple Inc.

"That was his job with Steve (Jobs). And he explained that the job would change over time and I should be prepared for that."

While Sandberg has enjoyed a steady run at Facebook, it is Cook's job that has changed radically since then. Now, the man who was handed one of the more daunting tasks in business - filling the shoes of the late Steve Jobs and keeping Apple on top - may himself need a spot of advice.

Two years into Cook's tenure, Apple is expected to unveil a redesigned iPhone next month. It will be a key moment for Cook. The company he inherited has become a very different creature: a mature corporate behemoth rather than a scrappy industry pioneer, with its share price down 5 percent this year, despite a recent rally. The S&P 500 is up about 15 percent this year.

A transition was, perhaps, inevitable after an astonishing five-year run in which Apple's headcount tripled, its revenues rose over six-fold, its profits grew 12-fold, and its stock price jumped from $150 to a peak of $705 last fall.

But it's been painful for some.

It is unclear whether the spread-sheeting-loving, consensus-oriented, even-keeled Cook can successfully reshape the cult-like culture that Jobs built. Though Cook has deftly managed the iPhone and iPad product lines, which continue to deliver enormous profits, Apple has yet to launch a major new product under Cook; talk of watches and televisions remains just that.

Some worry that Cook's changes to the culture have doused the fire - and perhaps the fear - that drove employees to try to achieve the impossible.

CAN NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST?

Cook is known as a workaholic who guards his privacy closely. People who know him well paint a portrait of a thoughtful, data-driven executive who knows how to listen and who can be charming and funny in small group settings.

Lisa Cooper, who went to high school with Cook in Robertsville, Alabama, and remains a friend, still laughs at memories of Cook staging prank photos for the school yearbook and crooning "The Way We Were" to her in class.

In the day to day at Apple, Cook has established a methodical, no-nonsense style, one that's as different as could be from that of his predecessor.

"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female," Manning, 25, said in the statement read on NBC News' "Today" show.

"Given the way that I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible," Manning said. "I also request that starting today you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun."

Manning's lawyer David Coombs said on the program that he expected Manning to get a pardon from President Barack Obama.

Manning, a former junior intelligence analyst, was sentenced on Wednesday for turning over more than 700,000 classified files, battlefield videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of secret data in the nation's history.

The users are said to have "incited dissatisfaction with the government" by spreading rumours about a "hero" used in various propaganda posters.

Prosecutors said the group had been profiting from the activity.

The arrests come at a time when the Chinese authorities are seeking to reassert strict rules around public discourse.

"On one hand they know how popular this platform is, but they are also aware it can be a disruptive force," said BBCChinese.com editor Zhuang Chen.

"This is one of the main campaigns that the Chinese public security ministry is carrying out - to send out a clear message."

The arrested users were said to have spread rumours about Lei Feng, a deceased soldier who is often used as an example of the model Chinese citizen, a Communist Party devotee.

"Information that seriously harmed the image of Lei Feng was rapidly transmitted across the internet," the People's Daily reported, "and Lei Feng's glorious image was quickly brought into question."

Power users

With almost 300 million users in the country, the social network is booming - even attracting famous names from outside of the country.

The likes of Robert Downey Jr, Paris Hilton and basketball star Kobe Bryant all have a presence on the site - although they are mostly there for marketing purposes rather than the more general discussion often found on Twitter.

Earlier this month, the government brought together some of Sina Weibo's most popular users to discuss their use of the platform.

The meeting, held at the headquarters of China's state TV network, set out seven key "minimums" for behaviour.

They included vaguely set standards for upholding the national interest, keeping with socialist values and maintaining public order.

Racing through the city's scenic old quarter in the "Forza Motorsport 5" videogame is unnervingly realistic - not least thanks to the force-feedback steering wheel that makes the speeding driver struggle to keep control.

The upcoming Microsoft Xbox One game is also just one example of an increasingly symbiotic relationship between software developers and the auto industry. Together they get games fans behind the wheel and carmakers in pole position to woo today's younger consumers as tomorrow's car buyers.

Even if many of the players may not be able to afford to buy a car now, Volkswagen's Audi sponsors the game since it can start winning brand loyalty for the future. It is also well aware that driving games are not just enjoyed by the young.

"It's not just about reaching the youth - an Audi in a video game also reaches our core target group. Unlike in a movie where there is a straight narrative, a video game is interactive and the storyline is not defined in advance," said Kai Mensing, head of International Product Placement at the company.

Meanwhile Nissan competes on screens as a partner in Sony's rival PlayStation game "Gran Turismo", giving gamers the chance to enter a competition which starts with driving a Leaf electric car in their living rooms and could lead to actually racing a real 370Z sports car on Britain's Silverstone circuit.

"We take you all the way through to being a racing driver," said Gareth Dunsmore, general manager for marketing in Europe, adding that its "GT Academy" finalist Lucas Ordonez went on to a real world podium finish at the Le Mans 24 hour race in 2011.

Nissan's digital advertising spend has trebled in the last five years and is expected to top $500 million this year, roughly 25 percent of Nissan's overall advertising outlay.

"GT Academy is a great way for us to attract the gaming community to the brand. A million people have experienced this year driving an electric vehicle in a game," Dunsmore said.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

David Miranda, partner of U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, was questioned for nine hours on Sunday at London's Heathrow Airport before being released without charge, prompting calls for an explanation of why anti-terrorism powers were used to detain the Brazilian citizen.

Miranda, who was in transit from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, was released without charge minus his laptop, phone and memory sticks. His lawyer has requested an injunction to prevent the authorities from examining any data seized from Miranda.

At a hearing at London's High Court, police lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw said officers were still examining tens of thousands of pages of digital material from Miranda.

Mayor Boris Johnson in July gave his backing to three plans for a new airport, which he said were deliverable by 2029, and favored a 68 billion pound ($106.6 billion) project on the Isle of Grain in Kent, 30 miles east of London.

"The Isle of Grain has the space to accommodate a world-class, efficient hub airport," Johnson said in a submission to the Airport Commission, which is assessing the options and will make recommendations in a final report by summer 2015.

But building an airport there would require the dismantling and relocation of one of Britain's most important energy hubs including the LNG terminal, gas storage sites and a big power station in a complex that dominates the eastern end of the peninsula.

The mayor's office did not identify an alternate location for the energy hub, and analysts say another site is not likely to be found close to London that can take the 350 meter-long LNG tankers that arrive at the terminal.

"There are so many things that don't make sense with the Isle of Grain as an airport, and energy is certainly a huge factor in this," Zoe Metcalfe, aviation director at Buro Happold Consulting, said.

"Where else close to London will you find a space to build another deep-water port for LNG tankers that's accepted by the public? It just doesn't work," she added.

Britain relies increasingly on gas imports because its own North Sea reserves are dwindling fast. The Grain LNG terminal, Europe's biggest in terms of tank capacity, is able to import over 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, around 20 percent of Britain's needs.

National Grid has planned to expand it.

"By 2020, over 60 percent of UK Gas is expected to be imported," National Grid said in a report on the Grain terminal.

"The UK faces a significant energy challenge over the coming years, and the developments taking place at the Isle of Grain will ensure meeting that challenge," it said.

LNG tankers bring supercooled (minus 160 degrees Celsius), pressurized gas from overseas suppliers such as Qatar.

Once in Britain, the gas is pumped through cryogenic pipelines into massive gas storage tanks before it is regasified to 600 times its liquid volume and fed into the grid.

STRATEGIC ENERGY HUB

The mayor's submission backs a plan by architect Norman Foster for a new Thames Hub Airport with four runways that could handle up to 150 million passengers a year.

The virus was detected in a faecal sample taken from an Egyptian tomb bat, collected close to the home of the first known Mers victim.

The research is published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

But while scientists found a genetic match, they think it is unlikely that bats are responsible for passing the virus to humans.

Instead they think the virus is spreading from the winged mammals to other animals before it is reaching people.

Another piece of research was recently published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, which suggested that this intermediary animal could be the dromedary camel.

However, only antibodies - the proteins produced to fight infections - were detected in camels, rather than the virus itself, and more work needs to be done to confirm this finding.

'Identical sequence'

The Mers coronavirus first emerged in the Middle East last year. So far, there have been 94 confirmed cases and 47 deaths.

While the virus has been spreading between humans, most cases are thought to have been caused by contact with an animal.

But scientists have struggled to work out which one.

In October 2012 and April 2013, researchers collected samples taken from different bat species found close to the home of the first known victim of Mers.

These were sent to Columbia University in New York. However, the first batch was opened at US customs, and thawed to room temperature. The April batch arrived intact.

Of the 1,000 samples collected, only one taken from the Egyptian tomb bat contained any signs of the virus.

Dr Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity from Columbia University and a co-author of the study, said: "In this case we have a virus in an animal that is identical in sequence to the virus found in the first human case."

Narrowing hunt

The finding suggests that bats could be the origin of the disease, but scientists are looking for another animal that is involved in its spread. Samples taken from camels, sheep, goats and cattle are now being analysed.

Commenting on the research, Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist from the University of Nottingham, said: "We have long suspected that bats are likely to be the original source of Mers. They've been around for millions of years and have picked up a lot of viruses on the way - bats are a source of lots of human virus infections, like Ebola, henipahvirus, rabies and Sars.

Children's profiles will have default settings making less of their personal information publicly visible, with more prominent links to safety information.

Support requests from child members will also be dealt with separately.

The decision comes the day after the social-networking site for professionals launched University Pages, allowing higher education institutions to set up profiles.

Dr Bernie Hogan, of the Oxford Internet Institute, said the development, which takes effect on 12 September, would help children "differentiate between the public profile they want for employment [and] the personal profile they share on Facebook with their friends and family".

"I am personally opposed to employers intruding on Facebook pages while screening candidates," he said.

"The risk of unintended discrimination is very high."

But Dr Hogan also warned children could become a nuisance to Linkedin's 225 million existing members if they used the site to play games or set up profiles with false names.

"You can't get employed under a fake name," he said.

New York University, the University of Michigan and French business school Insead have already set up Linkedin profiles.

Communications regulator Ofcom is proposing to license a new satellite system for aircraft, ships and trains.

Earth Stations on Mobile Platforms (ESOMPs) can deliver connections up to 10 times faster than those currently available to travellers.

Britain's airlines have not indicated whether they would use the technology.

Ofcom began a consultation last week on the authorisation of the stabilised satellite dish system, which utilises high-frequency bands.

'Commercial decision'

Several commercial satellite operators are planning to launch networks that support the use of ESOMPs in the coming months.

An Ofcom representative said airlines would "have to make a commercial decision" on whether to utilise the new systems.

British Airways' in-flight entertainment and technology manager, Richard D'Cruze, said the airline was "closely monitoring developments in the connectivity market in both the satellite and direct air-to-ground technology areas". Ofcom says it has been working with its European counterparts for the past two years, including France, Germany and Luxembourg, who are in the process of putting together their own regulations.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US has already authorised the use of ESOMPs.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband information website thinkbroadband.com, told the BBC the "inevitable higher costs for new systems" may be passed on to data-hungry passengers, who would instead choose to rely on various 3G and 4G mobile options.

"The parts of the UK that might benefit the most are those train services in rural areas where 3G connectivity is currently very poor or non-existent," he added.

It announced the move at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne as part of its ID@Xbox self-publishing programme.

The equivalent hardware for the Xbox 360 costs thousands of pounds.

One expert said the move might help address a perception that Sony was more "indie-friendly".

The PlayStation maker dedicated a large part of its presentation to independent developers at the E3 expo in June, while Microsoft only briefly mentioned the sector at the Los Angeles event.

"Microsoft needed to be stronger about its message about this side of the industry," said Ed Barton, director of digital media at research firm Strategy Analytics.

"It has always been good at supporting the big firms with 400-strong teams, but it needs to show it can go down the spectrum all the way to the one-man bands.

"No-one knows where the next Minecraft will come from. And even if this doesn't move the needle hugely in terms of video game sales it will get the firm good press. There's a part of the public that love [independent] games like Journey - they make the ecosystem more interesting."

Track record

Although Microsoft said that in time it intended to make it possible for software writers to create games using retail versions of the Xbox One, at launch the facility will be limited to special development editions of the machine. To qualify, it said, developers must have a proven track record of shipping games on a console, PC or mobile devices.

Teams which are approved will be given two of the development machines free of charge.

The teams must also have their programs certified by Microsoft's managers before they become available to the public, but they will be free to set their own wholesale price to which the console-maker will then add its own charge.

Microsoft added that it was taking steps to make sure gamers could easily discover self-published titles on its marketplace by:

Allowing the games to show up in the main Xbox One store rather putting them into a separate area, as was the case with the Xbox 360 Offering a view of what is "trending", based on what the gamers' friends and the wider community are playing Using an "editor picks" section to showcase indie titles In addition, it confirmed it would not charge developers to distribute software updates - the firm ended such fees for the Xbox 360 in April - and would not place a limit on how many updates they offered.

The storage tank breach of about 300 tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday.

The latest leak, which is continuing, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.

After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

"That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse," said Michiaki Furukawa, who is professor emeritus at Nagoya University and a nuclear chemist.

The embattled utility Tokyo Electric has struggled to keep the Fukushima site under control since an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor meltdowns in March 2011.

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority has classified the latest leak as a level 1 incident, the second lowest on an international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.

But it is the first time Japan has issued a so-called INES rating for Fukushima since the meltdowns. Following the quake and tsunami, Fukushima was assigned the highest rating of 7, when it was hit by explosions after a loss of power and cooling.

A Tokyo Electric official said that workers who were monitoring storage tanks appeared to have failed to detect the leak of water which pooled up around the tank.

"We failed to discover the leak at an early stage and we need to review not only the tanks but also our monitoring system," he said.

Continued contaminated water leaks from Fukushima has alarmed Japan's neighbors South Korea and China.

Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, has been criticized for its failure to prepare for the disaster and been accused of covering up the extent of the problems at the plant.

FLOODED BASEMENTS

Massive amounts of radioactive fluids are accumulating at the Fukushima plant as Tepco floods reactor cores via a jerry-rigged system to keep melted uranium fuel rods cool and stable.

The water in the improvised cooling system then flows into basements and trenches that have been leaking since the disaster.