Morning Newspapers 09-10-2013 | ScienceTechn

Since mid-July, three interlocking events - all of them considered highly unlikely six months ago - have unfolded in quick succession, unsettling Microsoft managers and employees and roiling its share price.

First, CEO Steve Ballmer rejiggered top management as part of an ambitious plan to remodel the company around devices and services rather than software. Six weeks later, he announced his retirement within a year, sending shares soaring. Ten days after that, he unveiled a $7.2 billion purchase of Nokia's phone business, a move that ate up the stock's recent gains.

Within the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters at least, the casually dressed workers seem much more worried about the far-reaching reorganization announced by Ballmer than the multibillion-dollar Nokia acquisition, which has incensed many investors who view it as a waste of money.

"The funniest thing I read on LinkedIn was, 'Two black holes converge,'" said one Microsoft employee, who asked not to be named, soon after the Nokia acquisition was announced. "But I think there's some real potential here."

The topic of Ballmer's retirement elicited a more complex reaction from some Microsoft employees interviewed this week.

"Like Wall Street, there was initial euphoria with the announcement for employees," said one 15-year veteran who has worked in a number of units at the company, in response to Ballmer's retirement and a change at the helm of a company that no longer sets the pace for technological innovation.

"But he is as much a symptom as the actual problem. This whole crazy re-org will still happen. And nothing will really change." he said. "Among many of my fellow employees - both new hires and long-timers - there is a recognition that Microsoft has lost its way."

Microsoft declined comment on the mood of its employees.

One of the ways the company aims to regain its stride is the addition of Nokia's phone business, but that will likely complicate an already complex reorganization that is just getting under way.

"The re-org is more unsettling for some people than Ballmer's departure. Exactly how that shakes out is more interesting," said another employee who asked not to be identified.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any Web content and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or varying charges imposed by the Internet service provider or the government.

Oral arguments in the case pit Verizon Communications Inc against the FCC. The biggest U.S. wireless provider is challenging the commission's order that guides how Internet service providers manage their networks.

The FCC's 2011 open Internet rules require Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally and give consumers equal access to all lawful content.

Verizon has argued the rules are an excessive, "arbitrary and capricious" intrusion which violates the company's right to free speech, stripping it of control over what its networks transmit and how.

The ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on the case will have major implications for the debate over the degree of regulatory power possessed by the federal communications agency.

The outcome will also determine whether Internet service providers can restrict some so-called crossing content, for instance, by blocking or slowing down access to particular sites or charging websites to deliver their content faster.

Public interest groups have termed the FCC rules too weak, saying the agency was swayed by big industry players and needs to forge more direct and clearer power of oversight.

"I'd like to see political impetus for the FCC to go back and do the right thing instead of fumbling along and continuing to make bad compromises," said Matt Wood, policy director at public interest group Free Press, adding that a loss to Verizon could serve as such an impetus.

In calling for clearer oversight and warning of the risks of letting Internet providers go free without net neutrality rules, Wood, however, acknowledged that since the case has dragged on, the industry has largely accepted the rules as they are written now and "generally stayed in line."

James Cicconi, top lobbyist for Verizon's chief competitor AT&T Inc, said the court doing away with the FCC's rule is unlikely to prompt any business practice changes.

But while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's bold gamble to throw himself into the Tokyo bid paid off handsomely, his claims to have the problems of the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor under control ran into fresh resistance.

The Japanese capital's decisive win over rivals Madrid and Istanbul boosts Abe's fortunes after he put his reputation on the line for the bid, and a brisk gain for Tokyo shares suggests a boon as well for national confidence, a key ingredient in the success so far of Abe's aggressive pro-growth policies.

The Tokyo bid committee estimates the world's third-biggest economy will get a boost of more than 3 trillion yen ($30 billion) with the creation of 150,000 jobs. The Nikkei stock index gained 2.5 percent on Monday, while some analysts predict a short-term boost of 10 percent. The examples of the London and Athens suggest a one- to three-month rally after winning the right to host the games.

But Tokyo, which held Asia's first Olympics in 1964, is now preparing for the world's biggest sporting extravaganza as the worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl continues to unfold just 230 km (140 miles) from the Japanese capital.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has recently been forced to reverse denials and admit that hundreds of tons of radioactive water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean each day. Radiation levels near tanks that leaked highly radioactive water have spiked, and the operator of the plant has voiced concerns that contamination may reach groundwater.

Abe said in Buenos Aires, where Tokyo's victory was announced by the International Olympic Committee, that the plant is "under control".

"I would like to state clearly that there has not been, is not now and will not be any health problems whatsoever," Abe told a news conference. "Furthermore, the government has already decided a program to make sure there is absolutely no problem, and we have already started."

Tokyo pledged last week to spend nearly half a billion dollars on cleaning up the plant, with critics saying the announcement was aimed at the Olympic vote.

But a poll by the Asahi newspaper over the weekend found that 72 percent of the respondents thought the government's response was too late, while 95 percent thought Fukushima was a serious problem.

That was the assessment on Sunday, not of an opponent but of an early and ardent Republican supporter of Obama's plan for attacking Syria, the influential Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers.

Rogers told CBS's "Face the Nation" the White House had made a "confusing mess" of the Syria issue. Now, he said, "I'm skeptical myself."

Congress will be in session on Monday for the first time since the August recess. Debate on Syria could begin in the full Senate this week, with voting as early as Wednesday. The House of Representatives could take up the issue later this week or next.

Obama is expected to spend the next several days in personal meetings with members.

Some Democratic opponents of a military strike, meanwhile, were looking for a way to spare Obama's administration the effects of a "no" vote.

Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts suggested that the president withdraw his request before it is defeated, saying on CNN's "State of the Union" that there was insufficient support for it in Congress.

There are no signs that Obama is considering that, but speculation about the possibility that the administration might delay a vote surfaced on Sunday when Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Paris after meeting Arab foreign ministers, did not rule out returning to the United Nations Security Council to secure a Syria resolution.

A U.S. official who asked not to be named later squelched that speculation: "We have always supported working through the U.N. but have been clear there is not a path forward there."

Obama is scheduled to address the American public on television on Tuesday, but even his political allies fear that his acknowledged power as an orator will be tested, given that polls show a majority of Americans opposed to his plan for military action.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough suggested that the speech will repeat points Obama has already made several times.

"What he'll tell the country is what this is, which is a targeted, limited, consequential" use of military force, McDonough said during a round of appearances on Sunday TV shows.

"He'll also tell the country what this is not. This is not Iraq. This is not Afghanistan. This is not an extended air campaign like Libya."

'FLOOD THE ZONE' IS NOT WORKING

There's still plenty to be said for the iPhone's sleek, simple design, easy-to-navigate operating system and tidy "closed garden" app environment. But as phones running Google's Android operating system, particularly Samsung's, have gained in popularity, iPhone owners have increasingly found themselves looking around and wondering,

"Why can't my phone do that?"

Many Android phones have bigger screens than the iPhone. Some are water-resistant and can even snap photos underwater. Android apps can update automatically. Users can control Motorola's new Moto X phone with their voice, without touching it. And that's just the beginning.

Add to that the fact that many in the tech world saw the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 as incremental advances, not the seismic leaps forward we'd come to expect from Apple, and you've got the more pressure on the company to ramp up the "wow!" factor.

"The smartphone market is more competitive overall, and in the high-end it has become a duopoly between Samsung and Apple," said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer-technology researcher with Gartner Research. "Many feel that Apple needs to regain the distance they once had over their competitors."

The iPhone has remained the world's top selling smartphone, save for a few quarters when it was dethroned by phones in Samsung's Galaxy S line. But after making up nearly 24% of all smartphones sold in late 2011, Apple's device is now down to about 14%, while Android phones account for a whopping 79%.

The iPhone and iPad "were revolutionary when they first came out, but (rival)products that are out there now are about as close to Apple's devices as they've ever been," Scott Kessler, an analyst at S&P Capital IQ, told CNNMoney. "The question is whether Apple is going to introduce products that are different enough from their competitors." So, what could we see come Tuesday?

The most high-profile feature that's been rumored for the new iPhone is a fingerprint scanner. Such a security feature would let users register a finger or thumb print and use it to unlock their phone.

There are reports the phone could be able to access LTE Advanced, a network that would make it faster than phones with 4G connections. That network is not yet available in many areas of the U.S., however.

A steady consumer inflation rate also gives the People's Bank of China some room to maneuver in response to any shock that might arise as the U.S. Federal Reserve starts to taper its monetary stimulus.

However, any sharp policy shifts in the world's second-largest economy seem unlikely amid concerns about rising property prices and after efforts to curtail unregulated lending.

"There is no sign of any shift in monetary policy," said Jerry Hu, an economist at Shanghai Securities, who saw stable consumer prices in the months ahead.

"I think monetary conditions will become tighter, probably through a combination of quantitative tightening and low interest rates."

Consumer prices rose 2.6 percent in August from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said, in line with market expectations and July's 2.7 percent rise. Month-on-month, prices were up 0.5 percent, slightly stronger than a forecast rise of 0.4 percent.

Producer prices fell an annual 1.6 percent, less than both a market forecast of 1.8 percent and a fall of 2.3 percent in July. While factory-gate deflation has now lasted for 18 months, the pace of decline has steadily eased from a peak of 3.6 percent in September 2012.

"The trend of stabilization in the economy is becoming clearer," Yu Qiumei, a senior statistician at the bureau, said in a statement.

There are increasing signs that China's economy is finding its feet after slowing in nine of the past 10 quarters, with other data already out for August showing some strength.

Exports rose more than expected, helped by improving demand in major markets, and manufacturing surveys suggested capital spending and industrial output have gathered steam in response to government steps to spur investment and promises to push through reforms.

As recently as a month ago, investors had worried that China was slipping into a deeper-than-expected downturn, especially after its money market was hit by an unprecedented cash crunch in June as the central bank sought to curtail credit growth.

But policymakers have stepped in with a series of measures aimed at stabilizing the economy, including quickening railway investment and public housing construction and introducing policies to help smaller companies with financing needs.

Data for industrial output, fixed asset and retail sales come on Tuesday is expected to increase confidence a sharp slowdown has been avoided.

The FIA international motorsports body plans to launch the electric-car competition next year as an alternative to Formula 1.

Qualcomm will provide wireless-charging and augmented-reality technology to help the teams taking part and the public watching the races.

It has also pledged an undisclosed sum of money as part of the five-year deal.

Both organisations said the intention of the championship was to both provide entertainment and to spur on electric-vehicle technologies.

One analyst said the events could help improve the public's perception of electric cars, but added there would need to be other developments if the tech was to go mainstream.

The FIA itself acknowledged change would not come overnight.

"We will make people more inclined to buy an electric car, but this will take time - five or 10 years," Formula E's chief executive Alejandro Agag told the BBC.

Wire-free recharges

Among the products Qualcomm plans to offer is its wireless vehicle-charging tech, Halo.

The facility - which is being developed by the company's London-based lab - creates an electromagnetic field using a copper pad buried in the ground. This can be picked up by a coil built into a vehicle, which converts it into electricity to power-up a battery.

British Formula E team Drayson Racing Technologies has already tested a customised version of Halo as a way of charging its vehicles when they are stationary. However, the intention is to use the tech to recharge only the competition's safety vehicle during the first year of the championship before extending it to the competitors' cars in either year two or three.

In time, Qualcomm said, several pads could be built into the city centre roads used by the races to provide "dynamic charging" - the ability for the cars to top up their power on the go, helping them complete the race in quicker time.

South Korea has already pioneered something similar, using a locally developed variant of mobile recharging tech called OLEV to power buses on a set route.

However, such schemes are costly and the FIA said it recognised the competition would need to prove popular if it was to raise the sums necessary to pay for the installation of the many pads required.

Live updates

Qualcomm also intends to help design the telemetrics system used by the race - the automated process that monitors the vehicles taking part.

The 50 year-old doctor is among growing ranks of people with so-called treatment-resistant depression, and after 21 years fighting a disorder that destroyed her ability to work and at times made her want to "opt out of life", this is a last resort.

Until recently, Susan and others like her had effectively reached the end of the road with depression treatments, having tied the best drugs medical science had to offer, engaged in hours of therapy, and tried cocktails of both.

But a renaissance in research into depression prompted by some remarkable results with highly experimental treatments has changed the way neuroscientists see the disorder and is offering hope for patients who had feared there was nowhere left to go.

Their drive to find an answer has taken neuroscientists to uncharted waters - researching everything from psychedelic magic mushrooms, to the veterinary tranquilizer ketamine, to magnetic stimulation through the skull, to using electrical implants - a bit like a pacemaker for the brain - to try and reset this complex organ's wiring and engender a more positive outlook.

Their sometimes surprising findings have in turn taught them more about depression - leading to a view of it not as a single mental illness but a range of disorders each with distinct mechanisms, yet all producing similarly debilitating symptoms.

"The thinking about depression has been revitalized," said Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University in Atlanta in the United States.

"We have a new model for thinking about psychiatric diseases not just as chemical imbalance - that your brain is a just big vat of soup where you can just add a chemical and stir - but where we ask different questions - what's wrong with brain chemistry and what's wrong with brain circuits."

ADD A CHEMICAL AND STIR?

There's little doubt that until this new breath of hope, depression had been going through a bad patch.

Affecting more than 350 million people, depression is ranked by the World Health Organization as the leading cause of disability worldwide. In extreme cases, depressed people kill themselves. Around a million people commit suicide every year, the majority due to unidentified or untreated depression.

Here’s something from one of the Microsoft managers:

Nokia and Microsoft worked closely together on the company’s Lumia 1020, and Microsoft made core changes to its Windows Phone operating system as a result. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Windows Phone work have revealed to The Verge that Nokia was left frustrated by some Windows Phone restrictions on its Lumia 1020 camera software. Specifically, the restrictions made it difficult to store the large image files and make them easily accessible to phone owners.

These secrets secrets and frustrations will no longer occur, and the collaboration appears to have helped Microsoft realize its priorities elsewhere. A Bluetooth file sharing feature is particular popular in developing countries, but Microsoft wasn’t aware as US consumers don’t typically use it. “We didn’t even have that feature, and we didn’t even understand or appreciate the degree to which it was critical,” says Belfiore. And here’s a piece discussing Coase and those transactions costs:

“I found the answer,” Coase recalled in his 1991 Nobel lecture, “by the summer of 1932. It was to realise that there were costs of using the pricing mechanism… There are negotiations to be undertaken, contracts have to be drawn up, inspections have to be made, arrangements have to be made to settle disputes and so on. These costs have come to be known as transaction costs. Their existence implies that methods of co-ordination alternative to the market, which are themselves costly and in various ways imperfect, may nonetheless be preferable to relying on the pricing mechanism, the only method of co-ordination normally analysed by economists.”

It sounds simple, but it was a groundbreaking insight because it explained why, for example, companies often became vertically integrated as they grew. Transaction costs are why a manufacturer of car tyres would come to own and operate rubber plantations in some fetid tropical country; not because its executives want to farm rubber, but because the transaction costs of not owning the supplier are higher than the costs of operating it themselves.

But the LADEE spacecraft quickly ran into equipment trouble, and while NASA assured everyone early Saturday that the lunar probe was safe and on a perfect track for the moon, officials acknowledged the problem needs to be resolved in the next two to three weeks. S. Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which developed the spacecraft, told reporters he's confident everything will be working properly in the next few days.

LADEE's reaction wheels were turned on to orient and stabilize the spacecraft, which was spinning too fast after it separated from the final rocket stage, Worden said. But the computer automatically shut the wheels down, apparently because of excess current. He speculated the wheels may have been running a little fast.

Worden stressed there is no rush to "get these bugs ironed out."

The LADEE spacecraft, which is charged with studying the lunar atmosphere and dust, soared aboard an unmanned Minotaur rocket a little before midnight from Virginia's Eastern Shore. "Godspeed on your journey to the moon, LADEE," Launch Control said. Flight controllers applauded and exchanged high-fives following the successful launch. "We are headed to the moon!" NASA said in a tweet.

It was a change of venue for NASA, which normally launches moon missions from Cape Canaveral, Fla. But it provided a rare light show along the East Coast for those blessed with clear skies.

NASA urged sky watchers to share their launch pictures through the website Flickr, and the photos and sighting reports quickly poured in from New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New Jersey, Rhode Island, eastern Pennsylvania and Virginia, among other places. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE, pronounced "LA'-dee," is taking a roundabout path to the moon, making three huge laps around Earth before getting close enough to pop into lunar orbit.

Unlike the quick three-day Apollo flights to the moon, LADEE will need a full month to reach Earth's closest neighbor. An Air Force Minotaur V rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., provided the ride from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

LADEE, which is the size of a small car, is expected to reach the moon on Oct. 6. Scientists want to learn the composition of the moon's ever-so-delicate atmosphere and how it might change over time. Another puzzle, dating back decades, is whether dust actually levitates from the lunar surface.

Holed up on bases where loudspeakers blare patriotic songs, or scattered for their safety in tented camps, Syrian soldiers are bracing for an attack by a superpower which they have little power to resist.

Orders have been given to stand firm. Headquarters buildings have been evacuated, infantry dispersed into small formations, hospitals stocked with emergency supplies and radar stations placed at the highest level of alert.

"I'm more afraid now than I was ever when we fought in Qusair or Khalidiyeh," said Saleem, referring to some of the most hard-fought battles of the past six months.

"If a foreign strike comes and the rebels manage to intensify their operations simultaneously, that's a whole new level of combat. I'm still more scared of rebel mortars than U.S. cruise missiles."

Interviews conducted remotely with more than a dozen Syrian soldiers, officers and members of militia groups backing President Bashar al-Assad reveal deep fears as they prepare for U.S. strikes at locations across the country.

Most of the soldiers were contacted by a Syrian journalist working for Reuters, now based in Beirut, who cannot be identified for security reasons. The soldiers he spoke to also requested anonymity or used only their first names.

Their comments reveal a military worried about its prospects after strikes that could reshape the battlefield in a war that has already killed more than 100,000 people and driven a third of the population of 22 million from their homes.

Many said their greatest worry is not the American missiles themselves, but the prospect that outside intervention could embolden their rebel enemies, who could launch an offensive and tip the balance of power in the two-and-a-half year civil war.

Although commanders spoke of unspecified plans to fight back against U.S. attacks, junior service members described the notion of actually taking on U.S. forces as absurd.

"Our small warships are spread around the coast on full alert, and why? To confront the U.S. destroyers? I feel like I'm living in a bad movie," said a Syrian Navy sailor reached on a vessel in the Mediterranean.

"Of course I'm worried. I know we don't really have anything to confront the Americans. All we have is God."

"WE'RE NOT IDIOTS"

The announcement came at 5:20 a.m. Tokyo time, but a large crowd watching on an outdoor video screen burst into cheers.

Tokyo previously hosted the Summer Games in 1964.

Japan's bid for 2020 billed the city as the safe choice -- despite radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally made a presentation to the committee and promised an effective cleanup.

"I am so happy, I am overjoyed," Abe told reporters at the post-announcement press conference. "I would like to share this joy with the people back home. We've received so much support from the people of the IOC and I would also like to express my support to them. And to the people around the world.

"A safe and secure Olympic Games will be staged by us -- I think that was another hope for their support. I would like to pledge that we will be discharging this responsibility." Abe said Tokyo would try to stage a successful Games to thank the world for its support after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan.

"Sport has the power to unite people," he said. "We experienced that after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, when athletes came to our country and helped us. Japan needs the power of sport, we need hopes and dreams."

Abe said Tokyo's 1964 Olympics had left a strong impression on him as a child. "I was only 10 years old but a lot of kids like me were fascinated. Like many children I dreamed of winning a medal. It was a celebration giving hopes and dreams," he said. "The joy (of winning the 2020 vote) was even greater than when I won my own election."

Tokyo's bid came in at $5 billion to $6 billion, compared to $19 billion pledged by Istanbul, said Ed Hula, editor and founder of aroundtherings.com, which covers the business and politics of the Olympic movement.

But Tokyo's government has already amassed a $4.9 billion Olympic fund to pay to prepare for the Games, Hula said. And a $1 billion national stadium that will be used for the athletic events and the Opening Ceremonies will already have been built for the rugby World Cup in 2017 and is not considered an Olympic expense.