Bits Blog: Facebook's Other Big Disruption

Facebook just made a potentially game-changing announcement. It got less fanfare than Tuesday’s announcement that it is going into the social search business, but this other announcement may have bigger long-term implications for the technology industry.

Put simply, some of the world’s biggest computing systems just got a little cheaper, and a lot easier to configure. As a consequence, the companies that supply the hardware to these systems may have to scramble to remain as profitable. The reason is a Facebook-led open source project.

In 2011 Facebook began the Open Compute Project, an effort among technology companies to use open-source computer hardware. Tech companies similarly shared intellectual property with Linux software, which lowered costs and spurred innovation. Facebook’s project has attracted many significant participants, including Goldman Sachs, Arista Networks, Rackspace, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

At a user summit on Wednesday Intel, another key member of the Open Compute Project, announced it would release to the group a silicon-based optical system that enables the data and computing elements in a rack of computer servers to communicate at 100 gigabits a second. That is significantly faster than conventional wire-based methods, and uses about half the power.

More important, it means that elements of memory and processing that now must be fixed closely together can be separated within a rack, and used as needed for different kinds of tasks. There is a lot of waste in data centers today simply because, when there is an upgrade in servers, lots of other associated data-processing hardware has to be changed, too.

There were other announcements, like a computer motherboard called Grouphug that allows different manufacturers’ chips to be interchanged without altering other parts of the machine. Before, they were custom made. Put together, such innovations potentially lower the cost and complexity of running big and small data centers to an extent that works for a lot of companies.

“Who wouldn’t want a cheaper, more efficient server?” said Frank Frankovsky, vice president of hardware design at Facebook, and the chairman of Open Compute. “The problem we’re solving is much larger than Facebook’s own challenges. There is a massive amount of data in the world that people expect to have processed quickly.”

To be sure, it’s in Facebook’s interest to attack expensive hardware. The company makes money from a service that requires hundreds of thousands of computer servers distributed in big centers around the world. Google and Amazon.com, which are not members of the project, maintain proprietary systems which they apparently felt gave them a competitive edge.

For Facebook, the difference seems to be more in the software. To the extent hardware costs drop, that’s great for them. Mr. Frankovsky argued that, while “this puts challenges on the incumbents” in hardware, “it also helps them. They have a finite number of engineering resources, and this way they hear from a community about whether there is an interest for a product.” Intel may hope to benefit from its open-source release, since it could see an overall rise in demand for its chips with the move toward cheaper computing.

The real test is whether Facebook can increase the number of potential buyers for Open Compute equipment. “The question is, can they extend this beyond a few Web businesses like Facebook and Rackspace, or a few financial exercises at Goldman, and bring this to industries like oil or aerospace?” said Matt Eastwood, an analyst with IDC, a technology research firm. “That will take it from 20 or 30 companies to hundreds of companies.”

The issue isn’t so much a technical one, he argues, as it is one of getting corporate information technology professionals interested in radical design changes. Mr. Frankovsky is aware of the problem. Recently he and his colleagues led a seminar in Texas for BP, Shell and other oil giants on how they could use Open Compute hardware in their data centers.

This will not change things dramatically this year, and possibly even next, but over the long haul it could remake a lot of businesses. Linux, remember, was around for several years as a minor player, but eventually undid Sun Microsystems and others.

Read More..

Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.

There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.

Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn’t be more different. Like a lot of siblings, we got along swimmingly at one moment and were in each other’s hair the next. My younger brother by two years, he said I was a bossy older sister. I, of course, thought I knew best for my little brother and wanted him to see the world how I did. My brother is quieter, more reflective. I’m a chronic social butterfly who is probably a bit too impulsive and self-serious. I dreamed of dancing in the New York City Ballet, and he imagined himself playing in the N.B.A. While the sounds of the rapper Mos Def blared from Adam’s room growing up, I practiced for concerto competitions. Friends joked that one of us had to be adopted. We even look different, some people say. But really, we’re just siblings like any others.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals. My doctors informed me that I had a high-risk form of leukemia and that a bone marrow transplant was my only shot at a cure. ‘Did I have any siblings?’ the doctors asked immediately. That would be my best chance to find a bone marrow match. Suddenly, everyone in our family was leaning on the little brother. He was in his last semester of college, and while his friends were applying to jobs and partying the final weeks of the school year away, he was soon shuttling from upstate New York to New York City for appointments with the transplant doctors.

I’d heard of organ transplants before, but what was a bone marrow transplant? The extent of my knowledge about bone marrow came from French cuisine: the fancy dish occasionally served with a side of toasted baguette.

Jokes aside, I learned that cancer patients become quick studies in the human body and how cancer treatment works. The thought of going through a bone marrow transplant, which in my case called for a life-threatening dose of chemotherapy followed by a total replacement of my body’s bone marrow, was scary enough. But then I learned that finding a donor can be the scariest part of all.

It turns out that not all transplants are created equal. Without a match, the path to a cure becomes much less certain, in many cases even impossible. This is particularly true for minorities and people from mixed ethnic backgrounds, groups that are severely underrepresented in bone marrow registries. As a first generation American, the child of a Swiss mother and Tunisian father, I suddenly found myself in a scary place. My doctors worried that a global, harried search for a bone marrow match would delay critical treatment for my fast-moving leukemia.

That meant that my younger brother was my best hope — but my doctors were careful to measure hope with reality. Siblings are the best chance for a match, but a match only happens about 25 percent of the time.

To our relief, results showed that my brother was a perfect match: a 10-out-of-10 on the donor scale. It was only then that it struck me how lucky I had been. Doctors never said it this way, but without a match, my chances of living through the next year were low. I have met many people since who, after dozens of efforts to encourage potential bone marrow donors to sign up, still have not found a match. Adding your name to the bone marrow registry is quick, easy and painless — you can sign up at marrow.org — and it just takes a swab of a Q-tip to get your DNA. For cancer patients around the world, it could mean a cure.

The bone marrow transplant procedure itself can be dangerous, but it is swift, which makes it feel strangely anti-climactic. On “Day Zero,” my brother’s stem cells dripped into my veins from a hanging I.V. bag, and it was all over in minutes. Doctors tell me that the hardest part of the transplant is recovering from it. I’ve found that to be true, and I’ve also recognized that the same is true for Adam. As I slowly grow stronger, my little brother has assumed a caretaker role in my life. I carry his blood cells — the ones keeping me alive — and he is carrying the responsibility, and often fear and anxiety, of the loving onlooker. He tells me I’m still a bossy older sister. But our relationship is now changed forever. I have to look to him for support and guidance more than I ever have. He’ll always be my little brother, but he’s growing up fast.

---

Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears regularly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.

Read More..

Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.

There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.

Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn’t be more different. Like a lot of siblings, we got along swimmingly at one moment and were in each other’s hair the next. My younger brother by two years, he said I was a bossy older sister. I, of course, thought I knew best for my little brother and wanted him to see the world how I did. My brother is quieter, more reflective. I’m a chronic social butterfly who is probably a bit too impulsive and self-serious. I dreamed of dancing in the New York City Ballet, and he imagined himself playing in the N.B.A. While the sounds of the rapper Mos Def blared from Adam’s room growing up, I practiced for concerto competitions. Friends joked that one of us had to be adopted. We even look different, some people say. But really, we’re just siblings like any others.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals. My doctors informed me that I had a high-risk form of leukemia and that a bone marrow transplant was my only shot at a cure. ‘Did I have any siblings?’ the doctors asked immediately. That would be my best chance to find a bone marrow match. Suddenly, everyone in our family was leaning on the little brother. He was in his last semester of college, and while his friends were applying to jobs and partying the final weeks of the school year away, he was soon shuttling from upstate New York to New York City for appointments with the transplant doctors.

I’d heard of organ transplants before, but what was a bone marrow transplant? The extent of my knowledge about bone marrow came from French cuisine: the fancy dish occasionally served with a side of toasted baguette.

Jokes aside, I learned that cancer patients become quick studies in the human body and how cancer treatment works. The thought of going through a bone marrow transplant, which in my case called for a life-threatening dose of chemotherapy followed by a total replacement of my body’s bone marrow, was scary enough. But then I learned that finding a donor can be the scariest part of all.

It turns out that not all transplants are created equal. Without a match, the path to a cure becomes much less certain, in many cases even impossible. This is particularly true for minorities and people from mixed ethnic backgrounds, groups that are severely underrepresented in bone marrow registries. As a first generation American, the child of a Swiss mother and Tunisian father, I suddenly found myself in a scary place. My doctors worried that a global, harried search for a bone marrow match would delay critical treatment for my fast-moving leukemia.

That meant that my younger brother was my best hope — but my doctors were careful to measure hope with reality. Siblings are the best chance for a match, but a match only happens about 25 percent of the time.

To our relief, results showed that my brother was a perfect match: a 10-out-of-10 on the donor scale. It was only then that it struck me how lucky I had been. Doctors never said it this way, but without a match, my chances of living through the next year were low. I have met many people since who, after dozens of efforts to encourage potential bone marrow donors to sign up, still have not found a match. Adding your name to the bone marrow registry is quick, easy and painless — you can sign up at marrow.org — and it just takes a swab of a Q-tip to get your DNA. For cancer patients around the world, it could mean a cure.

The bone marrow transplant procedure itself can be dangerous, but it is swift, which makes it feel strangely anti-climactic. On “Day Zero,” my brother’s stem cells dripped into my veins from a hanging I.V. bag, and it was all over in minutes. Doctors tell me that the hardest part of the transplant is recovering from it. I’ve found that to be true, and I’ve also recognized that the same is true for Adam. As I slowly grow stronger, my little brother has assumed a caretaker role in my life. I carry his blood cells — the ones keeping me alive — and he is carrying the responsibility, and often fear and anxiety, of the loving onlooker. He tells me I’m still a bossy older sister. But our relationship is now changed forever. I have to look to him for support and guidance more than I ever have. He’ll always be my little brother, but he’s growing up fast.

---

Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 24-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young adult with cancer, appears regularly on Well. Follow @suleikajaouad on Twitter.

Read More..

DealBook: Rio Tinto to Book $14 Billion Charge; C.E.O. Replaced

5:42 a.m. | Updated

LONDON — Two expensive acquisitions have come at a steep price for Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant.

The company, the world’s second-largest mining company after BHP Billiton, said on Thursday that it was taking a $14 billion write-down on the value of aluminum and coal mining assets — a huge amount that came as a surprise to some analysts and investors.

As a result, the company’s chief executive, Tom Albanese, resigned after five years in the top post. The company quickly named Sam Walsh, head of the iron ore unit, as its new chief.

The write-down is a significant blow for Rio Tinto, which once looked poised to capitalize on a global economic boom. Analysts said that the size of the write-downs signaled just how much the company had misjudged the values of the acquisitions, one of which happened as recently as two years ago.

“The level of the write-down is very disappointing, and it does come as a surprise,” said Keith Bowman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “There have been some rash takeovers in the mining industry, and I hope this continues to prove a lesson.”

The write-downs are linked to two of Rio Tinto’s biggest acquisitions in recent years: Alcan, an aluminum producer based in Canada, and the coal producer Riversdale Mining, which is based in Australia and manages mines in Africa.

The company blamed falling aluminum prices for $10 billion to $11 billion of the charge. Most of Rio Tinto’s aluminum assets stem from its $38 billion acquisition of Alcan, a deal that was led by Mr. Albanese.

The acquisition of Alcan was part of a multibillion-dollar takeover frenzy in the mining industry at the time. It was driven by soaring metal prices, and it led to Rio Tinto itself becoming a target in what would have been one of the biggest takeovers in history. In the end, Rio Tinto rejected the offer, by BHP Billiton, as too low.

Rio Tinto successfully outbid the American aluminum giant Alcoa to acquire Alcan in 2007. Rio Tinto seized on the merger, hoping to take advantage of rising metal prices on the back of a booming Chinese economy. But then global economic growth slowed, and demand for aluminum dropped quickly.

“In hindsight, it was a bad call,” said Richard Knights, an analyst at Liberum Capital. “But it was a different environment back then.”

The acquisition of Alcan in particular has weighed heavily on Rio Tinto’s performance. Mr. Albanese acknowledged last year that the company had paid a high price for the deal and he had repeatedly come under pressure to resign after the Alcan takeover had burdened Rio Tinto with debt.

Last year, Mr. Albanese decided to forgo his bonus after the company reported a 59 percent drop in 2011 earnings because it wrote down $8.9 billion on the value of Alcan assets.

“We are also deeply disappointed to have to take a further substantial write-down in our aluminum businesses, albeit in an industry that continues to experience significant adverse changes globally,” Jan du Plessis, Rio Tinto’s chairman, said in a statement.

About $3 billion of the $14 billion write-down was related to lowered estimates of the value of its coal business in Mozambique after the company failed to secure crucial government approvals to ship coal it mined in the African country.

Rio Tinto also overestimated how much coking coal it could recover there. Rio Tinto bought Riversdale Mining for around $4 billion in 2011 after increasing its offer price to resolve a standoff with Riversdale’s shareholders.

Mr. du Plessis said in the statement that the scale of the write-down related to the assets in Mozambique was “unacceptable.”

Rio Tinto cited strong currencies and high energy and raw material costs as other factors leading to the write-down.

Doug Ritchie, a Rio Tinto executive who led the purchase of coal assets in Mozambique two years ago, also stepped down on Thursday.

Rio Tinto’s shares fell about 1 percent in trading in London on Thursday. The company’s shares have dropped 6 percent in the last 12 months, even as the stock price of its competitor BHP Billiton increased 0.8 percent in the same period.

Mr. Albanese said in the company’s statement that he fully recognized “that accountability for all aspects of the business rests with the C.E.O.”

Mr. Albanese will stay on until July 16 to help with the transition. He will not receive a bonus for this year and any outstanding remuneration in the form of deferred stock bonuses would lapse, Rio Tinto said.

Read More..

IHT Special: Women Appointed to Saudi Council for First Time

DUBAI — For the first time in Saudi Arabia’s history, women have been appointed to the Shura Council, the traditionally all-male body which drafts laws, debates major issues and provides advice to the king.

It may seem a modest step.

There are still no female ministers in the cabinet and women will remain segregated within the council, with their own seating area and a separate door.

The unelected council has only an advisory role: It proposes laws but the king wields sole legislative power.

Yet the chosen women, and some others, are calling the appointments a major advance.

“This enormous, rapid and noteworthy progress means Saudi society and its governing body are finally ready to acknowledge and respect women’s voices and their rights,” said Dr. Khawla Al-Kuraya, a professor of pathology, and director at the King Fahad National Center for Children’s Cancer and Research.

Dr. Kuraya is one of the 30 women — drawn from the elite ranks of Saudi society and including two royal princesses — named by King Abdullah last week to join the 150-member council, which meets in the capital, Riyadh.

The king’s decree, which stipulated that from now on women should make up 20 percent of the council, came amid contradictory signals on women’s rights in the kingdom.

Women are still forbidden to drive and, since November, new electronic texting procedures have been introduced to tighten the compulsory monitoring by their male guardians of women traveling outside the kingdom.

Still, women’s advocates, including some men, are hopeful that the opening of the Shura Council could lead to other advances.

“This is a major move to introduce more reforms when it comes to gender equality throughout our daily lives,” said Khalid Al Khudair, founder of Glowork.net, a recruitment Web site for women in Saudi Arabia.

“Their presence as advisers to the king will move new laws in the right direction, with labor laws suited to allow women to work in new sectors and industries.”

“This could mean we will see women driving very soon,” Mr. Khudair added.

The change on the council follows several economic measures aimed at increasing female participation in the work force.

Since August last year, the Labor Ministry has progressively opened up jobs for women in the retail industry, notably by ordering the replacement of male assistants in stores selling lingerie, abayas and jewelry.

Mounira Jamjoom, a research specialist at the Booz consulting firm in Riyadh, said: “The decision to integrate women in the political process is timely, and by providing policy stability, the government can unleash the region’s considerable human promise — its increasingly educated and aspiring women.”

As recently as 2011 women were excluded from voting in municipal elections — the highest, if occasional, forum for democracy in a kingdom that has no elected national institutions. But the king has promised that they will be allowed to vote and run for office in the next municipals, planned for 2015.

“Saudi Arabia is the most conservative Gulf country when it comes to women’s rights, so the appointment of women to the Shura Council, while in the short term its impact is symbolic, in the long term its impact is significant,” said Najla Al Awadhi, a former member of the United Arab Emirates Parliament and one of the first female members of the legislature there.

“This step by the Saudi king begins to chip away at the institutional and psychological barriers in Saudi society that have historically been unaccepting of a woman’s role in public life where national issues are debated and shaped,” she added. “So the presence of Saudi women there is critical.”

Appointing women to the Shura Council also will create role models for younger women in a society where women have been expected to stay out of the limelight. “We are going to be partners in building our country and that is a phenomenal change from just 10 years ago,” said Muna AbuSulayman, a Saudi development consultant who was formerly a popular television talk show host and secretary general of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Kingdom Holding. “It is a great step in realizing that female rights are really human rights.”

Women will be able to join any of the committees of the council including economic, family and foreign affairs.

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe that specific female-related issues are going to be the main focus of the women of the Shura,” said Dr. Kuraya. “Rather, as members we have the right to raise and address the diverse array of issues that concern Saudi society as a whole.”

Read More..

Tool Kit: In Choosing a Tablet, First Try It On for Size

In the grand scheme of worries, deciding which size tablet to get — they all sit within a roughly three-inch screen range — does not quite rank.

But technophiles and technophobes alike struggle with the question. About half of the major tablets are the thickness of a failing magazine with screens about seven inches (measured along the diagonal), and the other half are about twice as thick with screens about 10 inches long.

Even if this isn’t a life-changing decision, it can be a baffling one.

The companies that make tablets give some basic but vague guidance. Google’s marketing materials say its larger 10-inch tablet is suitable as a “couch or coffee table companion” and its seven-inch Nexus 7 “is designed to go wherever you go.” Peter Larsen, Amazon’s vice president for the Kindle reader, says the seven-inch Kindle Fire HD is small enough to fit in a purse. He doesn’t say where the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD fits.

Here’s the first thing to keep in mind. It kind of doesn’t matter. All tablets can browse the Web, check e-mail and run apps. Some are better at some things than others, but the difference in screen size does not fundamentally change the nature of the machine.

Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, had a beautiful way of describing it to me. She said tablets of different sizes were like knives in your kitchen: “You can have a six-inch chef’s knife or an eight-inch chef’s knife or a paring knife, but they all cut food.”

Ms. Epps said that people more often than not use tablets in their homes, where you’d think that more screen real estate would trump more portability. And Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, who has been studying user interfaces for almost 30 years, agreed. “When it comes to screen size, bigger is better,” he said.

But I’m not sure that’s the whole picture. All those benefits don’t account for the popularity of smaller tablets.

I believe smaller tablets make up for their smaller screens and limited computing power by being easier to hold. That’s different from portability.

Phones are light enough for anyone to hold, and laptops are never expected to be held for long, unless they’re being toted in a bag. But tablets beg not only to be carried like magazines but to be held like them, too. This generation of midsize tablets is not only better out of the house, but more comfortable to hold in the home, on couches and in bed, where they are most often used. The bigger tablets weigh just enough to be annoying after a while.

So, I think you should get a little tablet in most cases. Except these:

YOU HAVE BAD EYES With less screen, text in a comparable app, magazine or e-book will never appear as large as on a full-size tablet.

YOU READ A LOT OF MAGAZINES Condé Nast magazines like GQ and Traveler have been redesigned on iPads to have scrolling pages with bigger text. But some smaller publishers simply port their magazines to tablets by producing what is basically a facsimile of a print page. When shrunk, these pages are nearly impossible to read on smaller tablets, whether they have high-definition screens or not, without zooming in.

YOU HAVE FAT FINGERS Mr. Nielsen says in a blog post about the iPad Mini that apps designed to run on the full-size iPad can’t just be scaled down without making it harder to push on-screen buttons. Nielsen says screen resolution is not as important as buttons, which should be more than a square centimeter in size. I haven’t noticed interface problems on smaller tablets, though.

YOU GIVE PRESENTATIONS Or you call yourself a photographer. Small tablets are clearly personal devices, but full-size tablets can double as sleek presentation tools for doctors displaying X-rays, architects showing off blueprints or sales people making pitches to prospective clients. They can get a lot out of the bigger high-definition screens on bigger tablets.

YOU WRITE A LOT OF MEMOS Or you write a lot of e-mails on your tablet. I don’t get why you would want to do this on a small tablet. Joe Brown, editor in chief of the gadget blog Gizmodo, told me that even on big tablets, touch-screen typing is not as effective as using a physical keyboard. “You should also probably just stick with your laptop,” he said. Unless you don’t have one.

YOU WANT A POST-PC EXISTENCE People who are technophobic seem to take to tablets. You can learn to use them in seconds, there is no long boot-up delay and they rarely crash. Because the lightest laptops tend to be only a little bigger than tablets in screen size and only a pound or two heavier than a full-size tablet, you might as well get the bigger tablet.

YOU LOVE VIDEO GAMES If you’re intent on buying a tablet with the ultimate in graphics performance, you should get a big tablet. Or an Xbox.

YOU ARE VERY BIG AND STRONG If you are an N.B.A. player, Olympian or a person of similar height, strength and weight, I’d guess a big tablet probably feels like a little tablet does to me. (I am a small Chinese-American man.)

Nathan Weiner, chief executive of Pocket, a service that lets people save Web clippings and view them later on any device, said of smaller tablets: “They’re like books and they’re a lot lighter, which is, to be honest, the biggest thing. The big iPad was always a lot of work. You’re always trying to prop it up in bed or on a couch, and it always felt top-heavy. I don’t want to make it sound like I have no arm strength, but it was less tiring in that regard.”

In the end, my advice is that no matter what brand of tablet you buy, you should go to a local store that carries it (Apple or Best Buy should work fine) and try it out. Really try it out — by testing apps, browsing the Web and looking at e-mail, movies and magazines, side by side. And for the sake of this conversation, hold it up the way you would at home for a few minutes. Get down on the floor, if you want. Irritate other shoppers by watching a few long YouTube clips or something. (You are about to part with several hundred dollars. You deserve to take your time with this.)

And if you are still afraid of choosing the wrong one, remember there is no wrong one. You cannot mess this up.

Read More..

Study Confirms Benefits of Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women

While everyone is being urged to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, some pregnant women avoid it in the belief that it may harm their babies. A large new study confirms that they should be much more afraid of the flu than the vaccine.

Norwegian researchers studied fetal death among 113,331 women pregnant during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009-2010. Some 54,065 women were unvaccinated, 31,912 were vaccinated during pregnancy, and 27,354 were vaccinated after delivery. The scientists then reviewed hospitalizations and doctor visits for the flu among the women.

The results were published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The flu vaccine was not associated with an increased risk for fetal death, the researchers found, and getting the shot during pregnancy reduced the risk of the mother getting the flu by about 70 percent. That was important, because fetuses whose mothers got the flu were much more likely to die.

Unvaccinated women had a 25 percent higher risk of fetal death during the pandemic than those who had had the shot. Among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza, the risk of fetal death was nearly doubled. In all, there were 16 fetal deaths among the 2,278 women who were diagnosed with influenza during pregnancy.

Dr. Marian Knight, a professor at the perinatal epidemiology unit of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, called it “a high-quality national study” that shows “there is no evidence of an increased risk of fetal death in women who have been immunized. Clinicians and women can be reassured about the safety of the vaccine in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.”

The Norwegian health system records vaccinations of individuals and maintains linked registries to track effects and side effects. The lead author, Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that there are few countries with such complete records.

“This is a great study,” said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, an obstetrician and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the work. “It’s nicely done, with good data, and it’s additional information about the importance of the flu vaccine for pregnant women. It shows that it’s effective and might reduce the risk for fetal death.”

In Norway, the vaccine is recommended only in the second and third trimesters, so the study includes little data on vaccination in the first trimester. The C.D.C. recommends the vaccine for all pregnant women, regardless of trimester.

“We knew from other studies that the vaccine protects the woman and the newborn,” Dr. Stoltenberg said. “This study clearly indicates that it protects fetuses as well. I seriously suggest that pregnant women get vaccinated during every flu season.”

Read More..

Study Confirms Benefits of Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women

While everyone is being urged to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, some pregnant women avoid it in the belief that it may harm their babies. A large new study confirms that they should be much more afraid of the flu than the vaccine.

Norwegian researchers studied fetal death among 113,331 women pregnant during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009-2010. Some 54,065 women were unvaccinated, 31,912 were vaccinated during pregnancy, and 27,354 were vaccinated after delivery. The scientists then reviewed hospitalizations and doctor visits for the flu among the women.

The results were published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The flu vaccine was not associated with an increased risk for fetal death, the researchers found, and getting the shot during pregnancy reduced the risk of the mother getting the flu by about 70 percent. That was important, because fetuses whose mothers got the flu were much more likely to die.

Unvaccinated women had a 25 percent higher risk of fetal death during the pandemic than those who had had the shot. Among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza, the risk of fetal death was nearly doubled. In all, there were 16 fetal deaths among the 2,278 women who were diagnosed with influenza during pregnancy.

Dr. Marian Knight, a professor at the perinatal epidemiology unit of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, called it “a high-quality national study” that shows “there is no evidence of an increased risk of fetal death in women who have been immunized. Clinicians and women can be reassured about the safety of the vaccine in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.”

The Norwegian health system records vaccinations of individuals and maintains linked registries to track effects and side effects. The lead author, Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that there are few countries with such complete records.

“This is a great study,” said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, an obstetrician and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the work. “It’s nicely done, with good data, and it’s additional information about the importance of the flu vaccine for pregnant women. It shows that it’s effective and might reduce the risk for fetal death.”

In Norway, the vaccine is recommended only in the second and third trimesters, so the study includes little data on vaccination in the first trimester. The C.D.C. recommends the vaccine for all pregnant women, regardless of trimester.

“We knew from other studies that the vaccine protects the woman and the newborn,” Dr. Stoltenberg said. “This study clearly indicates that it protects fetuses as well. I seriously suggest that pregnant women get vaccinated during every flu season.”

Read More..

Supreme Court Hears Argument on Cellphone Towers

WASHINGTON — In June, two Texas cities asked the Supreme Court to decide a practical question and an abstract one, both concerning how quickly local zoning authorities have to respond to applications from telecommunications companies to build wireless towers.

The practical question was whether the Federal Communications Commission was authorized to set time limits. But the Supreme Court, which includes four former law professors with an interest in administrative law, agreed to decide only the abstract question of whether an administrative agency like the commission may determine the scope of its own jurisdiction.

At the argument of the case on Wednesday, some of the justices seemed content to tease apart the semantic distinctions posed by the second question, though there did not seem to be much enthusiasm for adding further complexity to an already tangled area. Others appeared frustrated that the court had gone out of its way to avoid having to give real-world guidance about a concrete and consequential issue.

The case, City of Arlington v. Federal Communications Commission, No. 11-1545, concerns a 1996 federal law that requires state and local authorities to act “within a reasonable period of time” after receiving applications to build or alter wireless facilities. In response to a request from a trade association for the wireless industry, the commission made two decisions.

First, it found that it had jurisdiction to define what a reasonable time was. Second, it said that 90 or 150 days were generally appropriate deadlines, depending on the circumstances.

The Texas cities, Arlington and San Antonio, said Congress had not authorized the commission to act in the first place, pointing to a part of the law that said it was not meant to limit the power of state and local governments.

The general rules in this area were set out in 1984 in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which said that judges should defer to an administrative agency’s views when Congress itself has not spoken clearly.

The additional question in the new case was whether Chevron’s general framework applies to an agency’s determination of whether it has the power to act in the first place. Several justices said it did.

“The jurisdictional question, like any other question,” Justice Antonin Scalia said, “is to be decided with deference to the agency.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to agree, adding that it was hard to tell the two kinds of questions apart. “It’s almost impossible to talk about what’s jurisdictional and what’s an application of jurisdiction,” she said.

A lawyer for the cities, Thomas C. Goldstein, responded that there are times when courts should draw distinctions between an agency’s general authority to interpret a law and its specific authority to interpret a particular provision of the law based on the text of the statute.

Justice Elena Kagan said that was slicing things too fine. “Mr. Goldstein, at one level you are right,” she said. “It’s just a level that doesn’t help you very much.”

At the end of the day, she said, it is all the same question. “We’ve just had some very simple rules about what gets you into the box where an agency is entitled to deference,” she said.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the commission, said that a uniform approach was workable. The alternative proposed by the cities, he said, would “open a Pandora’s box” because there was no “clear, neat dividing line” between the two kinds of questions.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the court should generally defer to agencies with expertise that lawmakers lack. “Congress, which is not expert, would have wanted the F.C.C. to figure this one out,” he said.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said there might be a special reason not to defer to the commission in this case because it concerned a conflict between federal and state powers. Federal courts, he said, are better suited to policing that boundary than “an agency of unelected bureaucrats.”

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Video of Aleppo University Bombing

Last Updated, 6:07 p.m. Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists appeared to show the moment one in a series of deadly explosions struck the campus of Aleppo University on Tuesday.

Video said to capture an explosion on the campus of Aleppo University in Syria on Tuesday, uploaded to the Web by opposition activists.

The brief clip, uploaded to the YouTube channel of the ANA New Media Association (formerly the Syrian Activists News Association), begins with a view of smoke rising from behind a university building as students mill about. Moments later, following a very loud explosion close to the camera, students run for cover and a much larger plume can be seen above the building.

The building visible in the video looks similar one pictured in a photograph of the campus uploaded to the Web in 2010, which suggests that the clip was recorded by someone standing outside the university’s college of education, looking in the direction of the school of architecture.

A description of the video posted on YouTube by ANA, which is run from Cairo by the British-Syrian activist Rami Jarrah, said that the video was filmed by an activist just after the university was hit by a missile fired from a Syrian Air Force MIG fighter jet, and captured the impact of a second airstrike.

Another video clip, uploaded to the Web earlier in the day, appeared to offer a more distant view of the plumes of smoke above the campus. Mr. Jarrah, who blogs as Alexander Page, suggested that one part of the video showed the fighter jet’s contrail in the sky over the damaged buildings.

NEW FOOTAGE: Shows trail of Jet Fighter seconds after Airstrike on University of #Aleppo http://t.co/CRk3C8wb Syrian state TV Lie

— Alexander Page (@AlexanderPageSY) 15 Jan 13

While opposition activists insisted that the blasts, which killed more than 80 people according to the government, were the result of airstrikes by President Bashar al-Assad’s air force, state-controlled television channels claimed that “terrorists” had fired rockets at the campus.

An English-language news bulletin from Syrian state television started with a minute of raw footage showing the aftermath of “the terrorist explosion at Aleppo University.” The pro-Assad satellite channel al-Ikhbaria also broadcast video of the aftermath, showing extensive damage to the campus and victims being rushed from the scene as on-screen text blamed the attack on rebel forces.

Video from the pro-government Syrian satellite channel al-Ikhbaria showed the aftermath of bombings at Aleppo University on Tuesday

Restrictions on independent reporting in Syria make it hard to confirm who was responsible for the explosions, but the university is in a government-controlled area of the city and large anti-Assad demonstrations there last May were harshly dealt with by the security forces, despite the presence of United Nations observers.

Opposition activists claimed that witnesses saw the bombs drop from jets, and one antigovernment Facebook page posted what it said was a copy of a statement from the univesity’s own press office accusing Syrian Air Force MIG fighter planes of targeting the campus in two “criminal” missile attacks three minutes apart.

A blogger in Aleppo who supported peaceful protests against the Assad government but has been fiercely critical of the armed rebellion, Edward Dark, described the carnage as a result of an air attack that was “probably a mistake, not an intentional bombing.”

just now: regime jet bombs Aleppo Uni faculty of architecture as students are taking tests. this is in a peaceful regime held area #Syria

— edward dark (@edwardedark) 15 Jan 13

@APHClarkson no, I think it was probably a mistake, not an intentional bombing

— edward dark (@edwardedark) 15 Jan 13

A pair of video clips posted on YouTube shortly after the bombings showed extensive damage to what was described as the university’s architecture school. In one of the clips, dazed students made their way through shattered glass, carrying a wounded or dead man on a table, in the entrance hall to the architecture faculty pictured on the university’s Web site.

Video said to show the badly damaged school of architecture at Aleppo University on Tuesday.

Video of a wounded man being evacuated from Aleppo University’s school of architecture on Tuesday.

Another pro-Assad satellite channel, Addounia, broadcast a report blaming “a terrorist group” for the bombings — which was uploaded, with English subtitles, to YouTube.

A video report on bombings at Aleppo University from Addounia, a pro-Assad satellite channel.

Writing on Twitter, a Syrian-American from Aleppo who uses the pen name Amal Hanano posted links to photographs of three people identified as victims of the bombings by activists on social networks.

Muhanned Assi, 1st year Civil Engineering student. Killed in today’s bombing in University of #Aleppo. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/Wj3o5kII

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Fahed Miri, 23, refugee living in the dorms, volunteer, killed in today’s bombing in University of #Aleppo. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/Z8mjJGdM

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Sawsan Haqi, mother of 3, grandmother of 2, beloved citizen, killed today in University of #Aleppo bombing. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/WTjENdhZ

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Read More..