Homebrew Hardware Intersects With Sweet Sounds at Music Hack Day San Francisco

Music Hack Day San Francisco took over the offices of tokbox this past weekend for two days of getting creative with digital music. The results, as always with Music Hack Days, were a mix of the practical and the absurd.

Every Music Hack Day — part of an ongoing series of events around the world — offers participants 24 hours to conjure up inventive new ways of interacting with music with the aid of technology. Last year’s San Francisco event saw engineer Robb Böhnke recreate Winamp within Spotify as an app. Here are some of our favourites from this year’s event:

LSD
Taking the idea of the collaborative playlist and applying it to visualisations, LSD “allows people in the audience to control the visuals projected on stage at concerts and festivals, all using their smartphones,” explains creator Tyler F. Each visualization acts as a kind of room — people can log onto the site, join in, and take control of visual effects. Even better, they can add in visuals that they’ve recorded on their phones and add them to the mix.

Tweet Concrète
This jokingly pretentious offering from Ryan Fitzgerald generates short sonic collages based on randomly selected tweets from your account. Think of them as tweet soundtracks that last as long as each tweet takes to read. Or, if that doesn’t take your fancy, then why not try…

Nightingale
Apparently, Nightingale ”crawls through your Twitter stream and matches keywords and phrases to song lyrics by utilising text processing and sentiment analysis” to deliver an “amazing playlist” that matches the mood of your tweets. While the bar for “amazing” is set at an unclear height (and every playlist seemed to have a Black Eyed Peas song in it on our tests), it’s pretty good at picking stuff on Spotify that goes with the taste of each tweeter.

The Bonhamizer
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what a song might sound like if it had been recorded with John Bonham on drums, look no further — Paul Lemere’s Bonhamizer is just the ticket. Lets you upload a song and choose from four types of Bonham — “Basic Bonham,” “Hammer of the Gods,” “Double Time Shuffle,” and “Bonham Shuffle.”

Code Music
This site, from Daniel Imrie-Situnayake and Ryan Brown, turns valid JavaScript into music by mapping the “structure, nesting and errors contained within” onto a compositional waveform.

Soundvine
Matt Montag’s Soundvine lets you pair up your Vines with a track of your choosing, control the playback speed, and generally “remix” the looping video/audio format. Lots of the Music Hack Day projects focus on Spotify and Twitter, but it’s likely that Vine will become equally important over time as the format grows in popularity.

LazyListen
If you’ve ever wanted to be able to listen to Pandora without having the stress of having to use your hands to say you love certain tracks, Peter Watts’ LazyListen will help with just that. Using your computer’s webcam, the radio will stop playing if you get up and leave — and if you “rock out” to a track, it’ll automatically give it a thumbs-up.

Tweedio
Possibly perfect for parties, Tweedio (from Justin Mahon and Sean Po) lets people text or tweet to add songs to a collaborative playlist. Not only can new songs be added, but songs already on the playlist can be pushed up so they come on sooner.

Read More..

Oscar “losers” to go home with $45,000 gift bags

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Oscar nominees who don’t end up with a coveted gold statuette at the Academy Awards on Sunday won’t go home empty handed after all.

Los Angeles-based marketing firm Distinctive Assets will be handing out its annual “Everyone Wins at the Oscars Nominee Gift Bag”, valued at more than $ 45,000, to the talented and well-dressed “losers,” the company said on Tuesday.

Among the items in the gift bags, known as swag bags, are trips to Australia, Hawaii and Mexico, personal training sessions, condoms, a bottle of tequila, hand-illustrated tennis shoes, appointments for injectable fillers and ‘portion-controlled’ dinnerware for those watching their figure, Distinctive Assets said in a statement.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars, stopped its practice of giving gift baskets to presenters and performers in 2007 after the practice came under closer scrutiny from U.S. tax authorities.

Celebrities who receive gifts and free trips at awards shows are expected to declare them to the Inland Revenue Service as income and pay the appropriate taxes.

The Distinctive Assets gift bag is not endorsed by the Academy but has been creating consolation goodie bags for 11 years now. The bags are delivered to the losing nominees to their homes directly or through their agents or publicists.

This year’s “Not Everyone Wins….” swag bag also includes an under-the-counter water filtration system, acupuncture and aromatherapy sessions, a one-week stay at a fitness and weight-loss retreat, and a one-year membership to London’s Heathrow Airport’s private VIP service.

Nominees’ children also benefit: they get to enroll in professional all-kid circus classes.

The Academy Awards, the highest honors in the movie business, will be handed out a ceremony on Sunday in Hollywood.

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit, editing by Jill Serjeant and Philip Barbara)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Oscar “losers” to go home with $45,000 gift bags
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/oscar-losers-to-go-home-with-45000-gift-bags/
Link To Post : Oscar “losers” to go home with $45,000 gift bags
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Global Update: New Polio Strains That Protect Vaccine Factory Workers

Scientists have created new strains of polio intended to protect workers in factories that make polio vaccine. The new strains have the same ability to invoke an immune reaction as the live viruses now used to make vaccine do, but there is virtually no risk anyone will get polio if one of the new strains somehow escapes.

The research team, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is led by Eckard A. F. Wimmer, a molecular geneticist who made headlines in 1991 when he synthesized polio virus in the lab from its chemical components, the first time a virus had been made outside of living cells.

The world is very close to eliminating polio, which is now endemic to only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. But to be sure the disease is gone, children will have to be vaccinated for several years after the last detected case.

Currently, factories making the injectable Salk vaccine used in the United States and Europe start with the dangerous wild-type viruses known as Types 1, 2 and 3. After growing a large batch, vaccine makers “kill” the virus with formaldehyde and prepare it for syringes. The finished product is safe, but if the growing live viruses ever escaped “because of a leak, an explosion, an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood,” Dr. Wimmer said, “the spill could spread like wildfire.”

Right now, polio eradication depends on large sweeps by volunteers putting drops of the oral Sabin vaccine into children’s mouths. It is easy to give, and it produces better immunity because it reaches the intestines, which are lined with receptors for the virus.

The Sabin vaccine has drawbacks, however: it contains a still-live virus that was mutated long ago so that it is usually too weak to produce disease. In rare cases, it can mutate back into a dangerous form that paralyzes or kills. And the vaccine is risky in children with immune-system problems. For those reasons, the World Health Organization plans to eventually phase it out.

Once that happens, factories around the world will have to make millions more doses of the injectable version, so five years ago, the W.H.O. began looking for safer seed strains of virus.

Dr. Wimmer and colleagues took a part of the virus’s RNA that is crucial for growth, mutated it to weaken it, and inserted it in another stretch of RNA that controls how virulent the virus is. That renders the virus less lethal. “If it were to get into the brain, it doesn’t do any harm,” he said.

And, he explained, even if the virus evolved to defeat that virulence-lowering mutation, it would simultaneously cripple its own ability to reproduce.

Now Dr. Wimmer’s team is working with the Crucell vaccine company to prove that the safer strains grow well in Crucell’s proprietary human cell line. Ideally, he said, the new vaccine will eventually be mixed with others like those for measles and diphtheria, and all will be delivered together in one painless shot by a jet injector.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of a university. It is in Stony Brook, not Stonybrook.

Read More..

DealBook: A Revolving Door in Washington That Gets Less Notice

Obsess all you’d like about President Obama’s nomination of Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Who heads the agency is vital, but important fights in Washington are happening in quiet rooms, away from the media gaze.

After a widely praised stint as a tough United States attorney, Ms. White spent the last decade serving so many large banks and investment houses that by the time she finishes recusing herself from regulatory matters, she may be down to overseeing First Wauwatosa Securities.

Ms. White maintains she can run the S.E.C. without fear or favor. But the focus shouldn’t be limited to whether she can be effective. For lobbyists, the real targets are regulators and staff members for lawmakers.

Ms. White, at least, will have to sit for Congressional testimony, answer occasional questions from the media and fill out disclosure forms. Staff members, however, work in untroubled anonymity for the most part. So, while everyone knows there’s a revolving door — so naïve to even bring it up! — few realize just how fluidly it spins.

Take what happened late last month as Washington geared up for more fights about the taxing, spending and the deficit. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, decided to bolster his staff’s expertise on taxes.

So on Jan. 25, Mr. Reid’s office announced that he had appointed Cathy Koch as chief adviser to the majority leader for tax and economic policy. The news release lists Ms. Koch’s admirable and formidable experience in the public sector. “Prior to joining Senator Reid’s office,” the release says, “Koch served as tax chief at the Senate Finance Committee.”

It’s funny, though. The notice left something out. Because immediately before joining Mr. Reid’s office, Ms. Koch wasn’t in government. She was working for a large corporation.

Not just any corporation, but quite possibly the most influential company in America, and one that arguably stands to lose the most if there were any serious tax reform that closed corporate loopholes. Ms. Koch arrives at the senator’s office by way of General Electric.

Yes, General Electric, the company that paid almost no taxes in 2010. Just as the tax reform debate is heating up, Mr. Reid has put in place a person who is extraordinarily positioned to torpedo any tax reform that might draw a dollar out of G.E. — and, by extension, any big corporation.

Omitting her last job from the announcement must have merely been an oversight. By the way, no rules prevent Ms. Koch from meeting with G.E. or working on issues that would affect the company.

The senator’s office, which declined to make Ms. Koch available for an interview, says that she will support the majority leader in his efforts to close corporate tax loopholes. His office said in a statement that the senator considered her knowledge of the private sector to be an asset and that she complied with “all relevant Senate ethics rules and disclosures.”

In a statement, the senator’s spokesman said, “The impulse in some quarters to reflexively cast suspicion on private sector experience is part of what makes qualified individuals reluctant to enter public service.”

Over in bank regulatory land, meanwhile, January was playing out like a Beltway remake of “Freaky Friday.”

Julie Williams, chief counsel for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a major friend of the banks for years, had been recently shown the door by Thomas J. Curry, the new head of the regulator. Banking reform advocates took that to be an omen that a new era might be dawning at the agency, which has often been a handmaiden to large banks.

Ms. Williams, of course, landed on her feet. She’s now at the Promontory Financial Group, a classic Washington creature that is a private sector mirror image of a regulatory body. Promontory is the Shadow O.C.C. The firm was founded by a former head of the agency, Eugene A. Ludwig, and if you were to walk down the halls swinging a copy of the Volcker Rule, you would be sure to hit a former O.C.C. official. Promontory says only about 5 percent of its employees comes from the O.C.C., but concedes that more than a quarter are former regulators.

Promontory, as the firm explains on its Web site, “excels at helping financial companies grapple with and resolve critical issues, particularly those with a regulatory dimension.” But it plays for the other team, too, by helping the O.C.C. put into effect regulatory reviews. The dreary normality of this is a Washington scandal in the Michael Kinsley sense: a perfectly legal one.

Promontory, which demurred on a request to talk with Ms. Williams, has a different view. The firm doesn’t lobby or help in litigation. It argues that after banks stop fighting regulators and lobbying against rules, then they come to Promontory to figure out how to fix their problems and comply.

“We are known in the industry as the tough-love doctors,” said Mr. Ludwig, the chief executive of Promontory. “I am deeply committed to financial stability, and the only way to have stability is to do the right thing in both the spirit and letter of the law.”

Hmm. Remember the Independent Foreclosure Review, the program that the O.C.C. and other federal bank regulators trumpeted as the largest effort to compensate victims of big banks’ foreclosure abuses? As my colleague at ProPublica, Paul Kiel, detailed last year, that review involved consultants like Promontory essentially letting banks decide who was victimized. How well did that work? So well that the regulators had to scuttle the program because it hadn’t given one red cent to homeowners but somehow, I don’t know how, managed to send more than $1.5 billion to consultants — including Promontory.

Promontory maintains that it complied with the conditions set out by the O.C.C. And the review was replaced by a settlement, which the regulators say will compensate victims — though the average payout is small beer.

Who, exactly, makes the rules at the O.C.C.? I mentioned “Freaky Friday.” That’s because at the agency, Ms. Williams is being replaced by Amy Friend. And where is Ms. Friend coming from? Wait for it … Promontory. In March, maybe they’ll do the switcheroo back.

The O.C.C. didn’t make Ms. Friend available but said that her “talent, integrity and commitment to public service are beyond reproach” and would be subject to the rule requiring her to recuse herself for a year on matters specifically relating to her former employer.

I spoke with people who said she was a smart and dedicated public servant, an expert on the Dodd-Frank Act who can help complete the scandalously long list of unfinished rules and expedite its adoption.

“Amy Friend is absolutely rowing in the right direction,” said a Senate staff member who worked on efforts to push for stronger financial regulation.

Let’s hope so.

But people also described Ms. Friend as pragmatic. In Washington, that’s the ultimate compliment. Sadly, that has come to mean someone who seeks compromise and never pushes for an overhaul when a quarter-measure will do.

Washington today resembles something like the end of “Animal Farm.” People move from one side of the table to the other and up and down the Acela corridor with ease. An outsider looking at a negotiating table would glance from lobbyist to staff member, from colleague to former colleague, from pig to man and from man to pig and find it impossible to say which is which.

---

Read More..

O.C. shootings: Usually quiet neighborhoods rocked by violence

Several usually quiet Orange County neighborhoods were rocked Tuesday morning by a series of slayings and violent carjackings that authorities said left at least four dead, including the suspect, and others wounded.

The killings appeared to begin with the shooting death of a woman on Red Leaf Lane in Ladera Ranch. Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said someone inside the home called 911 at 4:45 a.m. and that responding deputies found a woman dead inside.

Neighbors described the area as upscale, with doctors and lawyers among the residents.

David Cabada, 26, was walking his dog when he saw the yellow tape.

"Nothing ever happens here," he said. "The worst that ever happens is somebody gets a parking ticket."

Cabada, who works in banking, moved to Ladera Ranch two years ago from Dana Point.

"Everybody here either has kids or dogs," he said. "Or both."

He said he heard helicopters Tuesday morning but didn't think it was in his neighborhood.

"This is shocking," he said. "Especially here."

Lisa Eminger, a homemaker, could see the home where the shooting occurred from her bedroom Tuesday morning. She woke up to the sound of helicopters and the sight of yellow crime tape about 7 a.m.

"This is kind of surreal," she said.

Jason Glass, who lives across the street, said a couple had lived at the home for about a year with three children. The family was quiet, he said.
"No noise ever came out of that house," he said. "No cops ever came to that house, nothing. This is really weird."

Glass said he was working in his garage Tuesday when he heard what he now believes were three to five gunshots between 2 and 3 a.m. About 4 a.m., Glass said, he "heard a bunch of ruckus" -- no yelling, but lots of doors slamming -- before a car sped away from the house.
"I just thought somebody was being really loud and obnoxious," Glass said.

Other neighbors said they were awakened by the police response. Erin Reffert and Mikael Dovsek, who live down the street, described their neighborhood as a great place to raise children. The biggest crime problem, they said, is occasional graffiti.

"It's super-quiet," Reffert, 22, said.

Authorities believe the suspect, initially described as a man in his 20s, fled the area in an SUV and headed toward Tustin, where Amormino said "multiple incidents" occurred.

Tustin Police Lt. Paul Garaven said the suspect attempted to carjack multiple vehicles in Tustin, with each shooting occurring a few minutes apart.

Police received a report about 5:30 a.m. of a carjacking near Red Hill Avenue and Nisson Road near the 5 Freeway in Tustin, Garaven said.

The carjacking suspect opened fire and wounded a bystander, he said.

Read More..

Ubuntu Linux Primed for Life on Tablets

We all knew it was coming. Once Canonical unveiled the “Unity” interface for Ubuntu — its version of the open source Linux operating system — we could see that the company was taking Ubuntu onto tablets. But now the new is official: A tablet version of the OS will arrive next year.

The question is whether developers will actually build applications for it.

Linux already has an app deficit, and trying to catch up with Android and iOS in the mobile market will be tough. To that end, Canonical is trying to woo developers by making it dead simple to port Android and BlackBerry apps on Ubuntu.

On Tuesday, during a conference call with reporters, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said that it will be “really easy” for Android developers to port their apps to Ubuntu using a Java interpreter. “We’re not going to try to make it happen by default, because we want applications by people who consciously choose to target Ubuntu, but we make it really easy to do,” he said.

He said that the Ubuntu QML development environment is very similar to BlackBerry’s development environment, which should ease the process of converting apps originally built for BlackBerry phones. The Ubuntu tablet OS will also run applications written in HTML5 and JavaScript, the standard languages for building apps on the web.

The mobile version of the operating system will be able to run the same apps that run on the desktop version, as Canonical announced earlier this year. Canonical’s strategy is to put Ubuntu on every device you own — be a TV, phone, tablet, or PC — and create a single experience that spans those devices.

“It’s one operating system that adapts itself to whatever device it is booted on,” Shuttleworth said. This lets developers build a single application — or binary file — that will run on any device running Ubuntu.

What about Windows applications? Shuttleworth points out that you can already access Windows applications on Ubuntu via tools using virtual desktop software from companies such as Citrix.

Shuttleworth said that some apps will be able to side-by-side in split-screen interface. This will make multitasking easier, Shuttleworth explained. You’ll be able to, say, play a video on one side of your screen and Twitter on the other. A business user might use this feature for taking notes during a video conference.

The tablets will be able to connect to a keyboard and a mouse, so that they can double as desktop machines. And these tablets will be built with both Intel Atom and ARM chips.

The OS will also provide full disk encryption. With businesses in mind, the devices will let you run multiple user accounts, each protected by this encryption scheme. “We expect to see the tablets adopted initially by enterprise,” Shuttleworth says, referring to big businesses.

The source code for the OS will be released on Thursday, and as Canonical had previously announced, the phone version of the OS will be released then. The two OSes use the same code base.

Shuttleworth says that an unnamed company has already agreed to build the first Ubuntu phone — “A major player in the silicon industry will commit to Ubuntu and optimize Ubuntu to their platform” and that the devices will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2014.

The plan is to launch with this preferred partner and two mobile carriers in two different markets. At launch, there will be both low-end and high-end versions of the phone. Tablet launches will be dependent on partnerships with PC manufacturers. Because of the carrier certification issues, he’s not sure whether the tablets or phones will ship first.

In the meantime, Canonical plans to launch a working version of Ubuntu that can be installed on existing Samsung Nexus phones this October.

Read More..

Ask Well: Coaxing Parents to Take Better Care of Themselves

Dear Reader,

Your dilemma of wanting to get your parents to change their ways to eat better and exercise reminds me of an old joke:

How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Sounds like your parents may be about as motivated as the light bulb right now. Still, there are things you can do to encourage them to move in a healthier direction. But the first step should not be to hand them a book. Unless you lay some prior groundwork, that gesture may seem almost as patronizing as an impatient tone of voice – and probably as likely to backfire.

Instead, start a conversation in a caring, nonjudgmental way. Ask, don’t tell. “Say, ‘You know, I might not know what I am talking about, but I am really concerned about you,” suggested Kevin Leman, a psychologist in Tucson, Ariz., and author of 42 books on changing behavior in families and relationships. Ask simply if there is anything you can do to help.

Leading by example is also more effective than lecturing. “The son can role-model health by inviting his parents to dinner and serving healthful items that he is fairly certain they will find acceptable, or ask them if they are interested in going out dancing with him and his wife,” suggested Ann Constance, director of the Upper Peninsula Diabetes Outreach Network in Michigan.

Pleasure is a better motivator for change than pain or threats. Use the grandchildren as bait. Ask if they want to take the grandchildren to the zoo or a park that would require a good bit of walking around for everyone. Or the grandchildren could ask them to come along on one of those 2K fund-raiser-walks that many schools hold. After all, a day with the grandchildren is always a pleasure in itself. (O.K., usually a pleasure.)

Tempted to give them the gift of a health club membership? “Save your money,” Dr. Leman said. Try a more indirect (and cheaper) approach. Create a mixed-tape of up-tempo music from their era. (“Songs they listened to from the ages of 12-to-17, which is what we all listen to for the rest of our lives,” said Dr. Leman) They will enjoy it any time — maybe even while walking.

If you really want someone you love to make a change, the key is to ask them to do something small and easy first because that increases the chances they will do something larger later. Psychologists call that “the foot in the door technique,” said Adam Davey, associate professor of public health at Temple University in Philadelphia, referring to a classic 1966 experiment called “Compliance Without Pressure.” In the study, which has been duplicated by others in many forms, researchers asked people to sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked to put a huge sign that practically covered their entire front lawn advocating the same cause.

“A surprisingly large number of those who agreed to the small sign agreed to the billboard,” because agreeing to the first small task built a bond between asker and askee “that increases the likelihood of complying with a subsequent larger request,” Dr. Davey explained.

Any plan for behavioral change is most likely to succeed if it is very specific, measurable and achievable, according to Ms.Constance.

And the new behavior should also be integrated into daily life — and repeated until it becomes a habit. For example, if you want to walk more, start with a 10-minute walk after dinner on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Ms. Constance suggested. The next week, bump it up to 12 minutes.

Don’t give up, even if you meet initial resistance — it is never too late for your parents or you or any of us to change. “Taking up an exercise program into one’s 80s and 90s to build strength and flexibility can result in very tangible and enduring benefits in a surprisingly short time,” insisted Dr Davey.

As for instructive reading, Dr. Leman is partial to one of his own books, “Have a New You by Friday,” and Dr. Davey recommends “Biomarkers: The 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitality,” by William Evans. Ms. Constance recommends the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site on physical activity and exercise tips for the elderly, as well as the National Institute of Health’s site on the DASH diet.

Read More..

DealBook: Morgan Stanley Strives to Coordinate 2 Departments Often at Odds

Several hundred Morgan Stanley retail branch managers descended on the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes resort in Florida early this month for a retreat. They were greeted by an unlikely colleague, Colm Kelleher, who runs the company’s sales and trading and investment banking departments.

Traditionally, traders and investment bankers think of themselves as the elite of Wall Street and look down on the retail business, seeing it as pedestrian. Yet Mr. Kelleher had a message for the branch managers: His group can work with retail brokers to increase profits at Morgan Stanley.

That message evokes the strategic emphasis that followed the 1997 merger of Morgan Stanley with Dean Witter, Discover & Company. The rationale for that deal was to create a financial supermarket where the retail brokerage and the investment banking businesses could complement each other.

But the company’s swaggering traders wanted little to do with the financial advisers, creating tension and turmoil that would lead to upheaval at the top.

The company over the years has set up revenue sharing agreements between bankers and traders. But that, too, created strife, with bankers and traders accusing each other of deliberating misstating revenue to avoid splitting fees, which some traders called the investment banker tax.

“Morgan Stanley has a horrible history of getting these groups to work together,” said Richard Bove, an analyst with Rafferty Capital Markets.

Yet since Morgan Stanley moved to acquire control of the Smith Barney brokerage business from Citigroup in 2009, the balance of power has shifted to wealth management, which now accounts for almost 52 percent of the company’s revenue, up from roughly 16 percent in 2006.

Gregory J. Fleming, the chief of the brokerage business, and Mr. Kelleher have been under pressure from shareholders to coax greater profits from the low-margin brokerage business by finding ways for retail and investment banking to work better together. The two men are said to have a good working relationship, leading to renewed optimism that the company can finally find synergies among its various divisions.

That is a change from a few months ago, when cooperation was difficult, according to employees at the company, because of personality conflicts between Mr. Kelleher and the investment banker Paul Taubman, who were the two co-heads of the institutional securities business. The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the policy against speaking to the news media without permission.

Mr. Taubman departed recently after a power struggle, leaving Mr. Kelleher solely in charge of sales and trading, and investment banking.

In recent months, the company has made changes intended to improve communication among divisions. Last fall, Morgan Stanley transferred Eric Benedict, an ally of Mr. Kelleher, to wealth management to run its capital markets operation. Previously Mr. Benedict worked for Mr. Kelleher on the equity syndicate desk.

A few months after Mr. Benedict moved to wealth management, the company created a bond, or fixed income, sales group to focus on middle-market clients. The company then transferred some of its smaller banking clients into wealth management to give them more attention. The fixed-income division will share revenue from this middle-market unit with wealth management.

James P. Gorman, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, is hoping that its sales and trading unit will work more closely with wealth management to increase lending, better tailor structured products for retail clients and improve collaboration on events like public offerings, company insiders said.

For instance, Morgan Stanley may take a company public and the executives at that company may need advice managing their personal wealth. In such an instance, the bankers would alert wealth management, which could dispatch a broker to assess the situation.

In January, on a call with investors to discuss the company’s fourth-quarter results, Mr. Gorman said 35 projects were under way to encourage collaboration between these businesses. One focus is how to increase lending to the firm’s corporate and individual clients.

A lot is riding on Mr. Gorman’s strategy. Morgan Stanley, which for years was best known for its high-flying trading operations and investment bank, was badly bruised in the financial crisis. Since then regulators have established rules that require banks to post more capital against riskier operations, compelling Morgan Stanley to scale back or get out of certain businesses. Morgan Stanley has shrunk its fixed income department, where most of its risk taking was embedded.

But, if Mr. Gorman can make it work, Mr. Bove predicted the chief could return Morgan Stanley to its former glory, “albeit in a different form.” Mr. Bove has a buy rating on Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley emerged from the financial crisis safer, but less profitable. In 2012 it posted a return on equity (excluding a charge related to its debt) of 5 percent. Return on equity is an important measure of how effectively shareholder money is being deployed. Goldman posted a return on equity for the same period of 10.7 percent. To simply cover its debt expenses and other capital costs, Morgan Stanley must achieve a return on equity closer to 10 percent.

Investors also focused on another number, from Morgan Stanley’s wealth management unit. That division posted a pretax profit margin of 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, exceeding most analysts’ expectations.

The number was higher than expected, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on the record, because the company deferred from the fourth quarter some major costs like compensation for certain executives.

As a result, some analysts and rivals are wondering how sustainable that level is. Morgan Stanley insiders say while some one-time items did help increase that number, it wasn’t significant and they expect Mr. Fleming to produce a lower but still high pretax profit margin for the current quarter.

“Although the first-quarter margin is seasonally lower, we believe that we can drive margins to the high teens and above over time even with only with modest revenue growth and a low interest rate environment,” said Ruth Porat, chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, on a conference call last week with fixed-income investors.

For that number to rise significantly, Mr. Fleming must make some of recent initiatives work, analysts say.

“Everyone is watching that number,” said an executive at a rival firm who was not authorized to speak on the record. “If they can increase, it will be a sign Gorman’s strategy is working, but so far not everyone is convinced.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly stated that wealth management now accounts for almost 52 percent of the company’s profit. Wealth management now accounts for almost 52 percent of the company's revenues.

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/19/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Morgan Strives To Coordinate 2 Departments Often at Odds.

Read More..

Jerry Buss dies at 80; Lakers owner brought 'Showtime' success to L.A.

Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died at the age of 80. Last week, it was revealed that he was hospitalized with an undisclosed form of cancer.

When Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in 1979, he wanted to build a championship team. But that wasn't all.

The new owner gave courtside seats to movie stars. He hired pretty women to dance during timeouts. He spent freely on big stars and encouraged a fast-paced, exuberant style of play.

As the Lakers sprinted to one NBA title after another, Buss cut an audacious figure in the stands, an aging playboy in blue jeans, often with a younger woman by his side.

PHOTOS: Jerry Buss through the years

"I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity," he once said. "I think we've been successful. I mean, the Lakers are pretty damn Hollywood."

Buss died Monday of complications of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to his longtime spokesman, Bob Steiner. Buss was 80.

Lakers fans will remember Buss for bringing extraordinary success — 10 championships in three-plus decades — but equally important to his legacy was a sense of showmanship that transformed pro basketball from sport to spectacle.

Live discussion at 10:30: The legacy of Jerry Buss

"Jerry Buss helped set the league on the course it is on today," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "Remember, he showed us it was about 'Showtime,' the notion that an arena can become the focal point for not just basketball, but entertainment. He made it the place to see and be seen."

His teams featured the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard. He was also smart enough to hire Hall of Fame-caliber coaches in Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

"I've worked hard and been lucky," Buss said. "With the combination of the two, I've accomplished everything I ever set out to do."

A Depression-era baby, Jerry Hatten Buss was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 27, 1933, although some sources cite 1934 as his birth year. His parents, Lydus and Jessie Buss, divorced when he was an infant.

His mother struggled to make ends meet as a waitress in tiny Evanston, Wyo., and Buss remembered standing in food lines in the bitter cold. They moved to Southern California when he was 9, but within a few years she remarried and her second husband took the family back to Wyoming.

His stepfather, Cecil Brown, was, as Buss put it, "very tight-fisted." Brown made his living as a plumber and expected his children (one from a previous marriage, another son and a daughter with Jessie) to help.

TIMELINE: Jerry Buss' path

This work included digging ditches in the cold. Buss preferred bell hopping at a local hotel and running a mail-order stamp-collecting business that he started at age 13.

Leaving high school a year early, he worked on the railroad, pumping a hand-driven car up and down the line to make repairs. The job lasted just three months.

Until then, Buss had never much liked academics. But he returned to school and, with a science teacher's encouragement, did well enough to earn a science scholarship to the University of Wyoming.

Before graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, when he was 19 he married a coed named JoAnn Mueller and they would eventually have four children: John, Jim, Jeanie and Janie.

The couple moved to Southern California in 1953 when USC gave Buss a scholarship for graduate school. He earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1957. The degree brought him great pride — Lakers employees always called him "Dr. Buss."

Read More..

New Whale Species Unearthed in California Highway Dig

By Carolyn Gramling, ScienceNOW

Chalk yet another fossil find up to roadcut science. Thanks to a highway-widening project in California’s Laguna Canyon, scientists have identified several new species of early toothed baleen whales. Paleontologist Meredith Rivin of the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center in Fullerton, California, presented the finds Feb. 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“In California, you need a paleontologist and an archaeologist on-site” during such projects, Rivin says. That was fortuitous: The Laguna Canyon outcrop, excavated between 2000 and 2005, turned out to be a treasure trove containing hundreds of marine mammals that lived 17 million to 19 million years ago. It included 30 cetacean skulls as well as an abundance of other ocean dwellers such as sharks, says Rivin, who studies the fossil record of toothed baleen whales. Among those finds, she says, were four newly identified species of toothed baleen whale—a type of whale that scientists thought had gone extinct 5 million years earlier.

Whales, the general term for the order Cetacea, comprise two suborders: Odontoceti, or toothed whales, which includes echolocators like dolphins, porpoises, and killer whales; and Mysticeti, or baleen whales, the filter-feeding giants of the deep such as blue whales and humpback whales.The two suborders share a common ancestor.

Mysticeti comes from the Greek for mustache, a reference to the baleen that hangs down from their jaw. But the earliest baleen whales actually had teeth (although they’re still called mysticetes). Those toothy remnants still appear in modern fin whale fetuses, which start to develop teeth in the womb that are later reabsorbed before the enamel actually forms.

The four new toothed baleen whale species were also four huge surprises, Rivin says. The new fossils date to 17 to 19 million years ago, or the early-mid Miocene epoch, making them the youngest known toothed whales. Three of the fossils belong to the genus Morawanocetus, which is familiar to paleontologists studying whale fossils from Japan, but hadn’t been seen before in California. These three, along with the fourth new species, which is of a different genus, represent the last known occurrence of aetiocetes, a family of mysticetes that coexisted with early baleen whales. Thus, they aren’t ancestral to any of the living whales, but they could represent transitional steps on the way tothe toothless mysticetes.

The fourth new species—dubbed “Willy”—has its own surprises, Rivin says. Although modern baleen whales are giants, that’s a fairly recent development (in the last 10 million years). But Willy was considerably bigger than the three Morawanocetus fossils. Its teeth were also surprisingly worn—and based on the pattern of wear as well as the other fossils found in the Laguna Canyon deposit, Rivin says, that may be because Willy’s favorite diet may have been sharks. Modern offshore killer whales, who also enjoy a meal of sharks, tend to have similar patterns of wear in their teeth due to the sharks’ rough skin.

The new fossils are a potentially exciting find, says paleobiologist Nick Pyenson of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Although it’s not yet clear what Rivin’s team has got and what the fossils will reveal about early baleen whale evolution, he says, “I’ll be excited to see what they come up with.” Pyenson himself is no stranger to roadcut science and the rush to preserve fossils on the brink of destruction: In 2011, he managed, within a week, to collect three-dimensional images of numerous whale fossils found by workers widening a highway running through Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Meanwhile, Rivin says her paper describing the fossils is still in preparation, and she hopes to have more data on the three Morawanocetus, at least, published by the end of the year. As for the fourth fossil, she says, it might take a bit longer: There’s still some more work to do to fully free Willy from the rock.

This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science.

Read More..