Author Archives: Guest Post

IBM and Broadridge Study Reveals Financial Markets Firms Challenged to Deliver Innovation and Efficiency

Only 1 in 5 firms excels at supporting new regulation and responding rapidly to client demands

Leading firms are rethinking their operations, forming external partnerships

NEW YORK, N.Y. – 21 Sep 2012: A new report released by IBM in collaboration with Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. reveals that increasing regulatory pressures and shifting customer demands are forcing financial markets firms to transform how they operate. Forward-thinking firms are breaking away from the industry’s long-held “not invented here” approach to managing operations to create a more open, agile and customer-focused model that expands the traditional boundaries of collaboration with external partners. (more…)

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Berkeley Lab Scientists Create First 3-D Model of a Protein Critical to Embryo Development

The first detailed and complete picture of a protein complex that is tied to human birth defects as well as the progression of many forms of cancer has been obtained by an international team of researchers led by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Knowing the architecture of this protein,  PRC2, for Polycomb Repressive Complex 2, should be a boon to its future use in the development of new and improved therapeutic drugs. (more…)

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IBM X-Force 2012 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report: Rising Attacks Focus on Browsers and Social Media Networks

New global security operations center in Wroclaw, Poland helps clients stay ahead of threats

ARMONK, N.Y. – 20 Sep 2012: IBM today released the results of its X-Force 2012 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report, which shows a sharp increase in browser-related exploits, renewed concerns around social media password security, and continued challenges in mobile devices and corporate “bring your own device” (BYOD) programs. (more…)

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Shrinking Snow Depth on Arctic Sea Ice Threatens Ringed Seal Habitat

As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study.

The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves. (more…)

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UCLA Engineers Shed New Light on 3-D Motion of Human Sperm Cells

Using new lensless imaging platform, team observes rare helical movements

A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has, for the first time, directly recorded the three-dimensional helical swimming patterns of human sperm cells. (more…)

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QR Code Usage among European Smartphone Owners Doubles Over Past Year

Germans are Most Avid Users of QR Codes, while Spain Ranks as Fastest Growing Market

London, UK, 19 September 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an overview of mobile commerce and QR code usage across the five leading European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) using data from the comScore MobiLens service. The study showed that European smartphone users scanning QR codes via their devices grew by 96 percent in the past year to 17.4 million users for the three month average period ending July 2012. Nearly 3 in every 4 QR code scans resulted in users receiving product information, making this the most popular type of result across Europe. Germany ranked first for usage of QR codes with 18.6 percent of smartphone users making use of the service, several percentage points higher than its European counterparts. (more…)

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