Science gets a grip on wrinkly fingers

By Samantha R. Selman

Scientists think that they have the answer to why the skin on human fingers and toes shrivels up like an old prune when we soak in the bath. Laboratory tests confirmed a theory that wrinkly fingers improve our grip on wet or submerged objects, working to channel away the water like the rain treads in car tires.

People often assume that wrinkling is the result of water passing into the outer layer of the skin and making it swell up. But researchers have known since the 1930s that the effect does not occur when there is nerve damage in the fingers. This points to the change being an involuntary reaction by the body’s autonomic nervous system — the system that also controls breathing, heart rate and perspiration. In fact, the distinctive wrinkling is caused by blood vessels constricting below the skin.

In 2011, Mark Changizi, an evolutionary neurobiologist at 2AI Labs in Boise, Idaho, and his colleagues, suggested¹ that wrinkling, being an active process, must have an evolutionary function. The team also showed that the pattern of wrinkling appeared to be optimized for providing a drainage network that improved grip. But until now, there was no proof that wrinkly fingers did in fact offer an advantage.

In the latest study, participants picked up wet or dry objects including marbles of different sizes with normal hands or with fingers wrinkled after soaking in warm water for 30 minutes. The subjects were faster at picking up wet marbles with wrinkled fingers than with dry ones, but wrinkles made no difference for moving dry objects. The results are published today in Biology Letters².

“We have shown that wrinkled fingers give a better grip in wet conditions — it could be working like treads on your car tyres, which allow more of the tyre to be in contact with the road and gives you a better grip,” says Tom Smulders, an evolutionary biologist at Newcastle University, UK, and a co-author of the paper.

Hold tight

Wrinkled fingers could have helped our ancestors to gather food from wet vegetation or streams, Smulders adds. The analogous effect in the toes could help us to get a better footing in the rain.

Changizi says that the results provide behavioural evidence “that pruney fingers are rain treads”, which are consistent with his own team’s morphological findings. What remains to be done, he adds, is to check that similar wrinkling occurs in other animals for which it would provide the same advantages. “At this point we just don’t know who has them, besides us and macaques.”

Given that wrinkles confer an advantage with wet objects but apparently no disadvantage with dry ones, it’s not clear why our fingers are not permanently wrinkled, says Smulders. But he has some ideas. “Our initial thoughts are that this could diminish the sensitivity in our fingertips or could increase the risk of damage through catching on objects.”

 

References

1. Changizi, M., Weber, R., Kotecha, R. & Palazzo, J. Brain Behav. Evol. 77, 286–290 (2011).
2. Kareklas, K., Nettle, D. & Smulders, T. V. Biol. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0999(2013).

The Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama

THE PRESIDENT:  Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice,

members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution.  We affirm the promise of our democracy.  We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.  For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  (Applause.)  The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.  They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

And for more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free.  We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.  Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.  For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.  No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.  Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.  (Applause.)

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience.  A decade of war is now ending.  (Applause.)  An economic recovery has begun.  (Applause.)  America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands:  youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.  My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.  (Applause.)

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.  (Applause.)  We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.  We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.  We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.  (Applause.)

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time.  So we must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, reach higher.  But while the means will change, our purpose endures:  a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American.  That is what this moment requires.  That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.  (Applause.)  For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.

We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm.  The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us.  (Applause.)  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.  (Applause.)

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  (Applause.)  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise.  That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.  (Applause.)  Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage.  (Applause.)  Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty.  The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war; who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends — and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.  We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully –- not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.  (Applause.)

America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.  And we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.  We will support democracy from Asia to Africa, from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.  And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice –- not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes:  tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.  (Applause.)

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  (Applause.)  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law  –- (applause) — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  (Applause.)  Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  (Applause.)  Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity — (applause) — until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.  (Applause.)   Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task — to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.  Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.  (Applause.)

For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay.  We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.  (Applause.)  We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.  We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction.  And we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.  But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty or an immigrant realizes her dream.  My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens and they represent our greatest hope.  You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.  You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time — not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.  (Applause.)

Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright.  With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you.  God bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.  (Applause.)

Movie Review: War Horse (2011)

By Samantha R. Selman

There is no combat in the early scenes of “War Horse,” Steven Spielberg’s sweeping adaptation of the popular stage spectacle, but the film opens with a cinematic assault as audacious and unsparing as the Normandy landing in “Saving Private Ryan.” With widescreen, pastoral vistas dappled in golden sunlight and washed in music (by John Williams) that is somehow both grand and folksy, Mr. Spielberg lays siege to your cynicism, bombarding you with strong and simple appeals to feeling.

You may find yourself resisting this sentimental pageant of early-20th-century rural English life, replete with verdant fields, muddy tweeds and damp turnips, but my strong advice is to surrender. Allow your sped-up, modern, movie-going metabolism, accelerated by a diet of frantic digital confections — including Mr. Spielberg’s just-released “Adventures of Tintin” — to calm down a bit. Suppress your instinctive impatience, quiet the snarky voice in your head and allow yourself to recall, or perhaps to discover, the deep pleasures of sincerity.

If you can fake that, as the old Hollywood adage goes, you’ve got it made. But while “War Horse” is, like so many of Mr. Spielberg’s films, a work of supreme artifice, it is also a self-conscious attempt to revive and pay tribute to a glorious tradition of honest, emotionally direct storytelling. Shot the old-fashioned way, on actual film stock (the cinematographer is Mr. Spielberg’s frequent collaborator Janusz Kaminski), the picture has a dark, velvety luster capable of imparting a measure of movie-palace magic to the impersonal cavern of your local multiplex.

The story, in its early chapters, also takes you back to an older — you may well say cornier — style of entertainment. Joey, the fleet-footed, headstrong half-Thoroughbred of the title, is purchased at auction by Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), a proud and grouchy Devon farmer with a tendency to drink too much. His household includes a loving, scolding wife, Rosie (Emily Watson); a cantankerous goose; and a strapping lad named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who forms an immediate and unbreakable bond with Joey. The teenage boy trains the horse to pull a plow and together they ride through the stunning scenery.

But this pastoral is darkened by memories of war — Ted fought the Boers in South Africa, an experience so terrible he cannot speak of it to his son — and by social divisions. The Narracotts are tenant farmers at the mercy of their landlord (David Thewlis), and if “War Horse” pays tribute to solid British virtues of decency and discipline it also, like a Thomas Hardy novel, exposes the snobbery and economic oppression that are, if anything, even more deeply rooted in that nation’s history.

So it is not entirely a simpler, more innocent world that is swept away by the war but rather a way of life whose contradictions are as emphatically presented as its charms. And what follows, as Joey is taken across the English Channel to the battlefields and trenches of Flanders and France, is a nightmare of cruelty that is not without its own sinister magic. Like most movies with an antiwar message, “War Horse” cannot help but be enthralled by the epic scale and transformative power of military conflict. “The war has taken everything from everyone” — the truth of this reckoning, uttered more than once by characters on screen, is self-evident, but it is complicated by the visceral charge and cathartic relief that an effective war movie gives to its audience.

The extreme violence of the slaughter in World War I is implied rather than graphically depicted. Mr. Spielberg steps back from the bloody, chaotic naturalism of “Saving Private Ryan” — this is an animal fable for children, after all, with echoes of “E. T.” and Carroll Ballard’s “Black Stallion” — but his ability to infuse action sequences with emotional gravity has hardly diminished.

An early battle scene dramatizes the modernization of warfare with remarkable and haunting efficiency. A British cavalry unit attacks a German encampment, charging through the enemy ranks with swords in what appears to be a clean and devastating rout. But then, at the edge of the field, the German machine guns begin to fire, and the British horses crash into the forest, suddenly riderless and instantly obsolete. Joey, who of course never sought out heroism in the first place, is relegated to a life of brutal labor that seems fated to end in an ignoble death.

He is kept alive by instinct, human kindness and the companionship of a regal black horse named Topthorn. Joey’s episodic journey takes him from British to German hands and back again, with a sojourn on a French farm owned by an elderly jam-maker (Niels Arestrup) and his young granddaughter (Celine Buckens).

Albert, meanwhile, makes his own way to the war, and his and Joey’s parallel experiences — harrowing escapes, the loss of friends, the terror and deprivation brightened by flickers of tenderness or high spirits — give the story texture and momentum, as well as giving Mr. Spielberg an opportunity to show off his unmatched skill at cross-cutting. (The large cast, mostly British and almost entirely male, acquits itself admirably, with a few moments of maudlin overacting and many more of heartbreaking understatement.)

Mr. Spielberg and the screenwriters, Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, have wisely avoided attempting to reproduce the atmosphere and effects of the stage production, in which Joey and the other horses are portrayed by huge puppets. He prefers to translate the tale, which originates in a novel by Michael Morpurgo, into a fully cinematic idiom. And “War Horse” turns out to have a central Spielbergian theme — perhaps the dominant idea in this director’s body of work — namely the fraught and fascinating relationship between the human and the nonhuman.

What do they — sharks, horses, aliens, dinosaurs, intelligent machines — mean to us? What are we supposed to do with them? The boundary can be hard to maintain: sometimes, as in “E. T.”, nonhuman beings are virtually impossible to distinguish from humans; at other times, as in “Schindler’s List,”self-evidently human beings are denied that status. Sometimes the nonhuman is a threat, at other times a comfort, but it always presents a profound ethical challenge based in a stark existential mystery: Who are we?

Mr. Spielberg’s answers to this question tend to be hopeful, and his taste for happy, or at least redemptive endings is frequently criticized. But his ruthless optimism, while it has helped to make him an enormously successful showman, is also crucial to his identity as an artist, and is more complicated than many of his detractors realize. “War Horse” registers the loss and horror of a gruesomely irrational episode in history, a convulsion that can still seem like an invitation to despair. To refuse that, to choose compassion and consolation, requires a measure of obstinacy, a muscular and brutish willfulness that is also an authentic kind of grace.

“War Horse” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The violence is intense and upsetting, though not especially gory by present-day standards.

2012 Apocalypse Myths Debunked: Five Mayan Doomsday Predictions & Why They’re Wrong

By Samantha R. Selman
On Friday, Dec. 21, some say, the Mayan apocalypse will arrive and the world will end. Fortunately, it won’t.

A bold claim, we know, but if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for us. The space agency has already issued a press release dated Dec. 22 entitled “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday.”

The Mayan apocalypse predictions arise from a misunderstanding of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar, which wraps up a 400-year cycle called a b’ak’tun on Dec. 21, 2012, the day of the winter solstice. This just so happens to be the 13th b’ak’tun in the calendar, a benchmark the Maya would have seen as a full cycle of creation.

Did you catch that? Cycle. In other words, the Maya had a cyclical view of time and would not have seen the end of their calendar cycle as the end of the world. It wasn’t until Westerners began reinterpreting the calendar in the past couple decades that it got its apocalyptic overtones.

Mayan apocalypse rumors have proliferated on the Internet, running the gamut from beliefs that Dec. 21 will bring a new era of peace and universal understanding to predictions of a devastating astronomical event. We’re all in favor of world peace, but we’re here to put your fears to rest about the likelihood of planetary annihilation. Read on for five common Mayan apocalypse fears and why they won’t come true.

 

 

MTYH: The Sun Will Kill Us All

Much has been made by Mayan doomsday fear-mongers of the fact that the sun is currently entering a maximum activity phase. The sun rotates through periods of quiet and activity that peak roughly every 11 years; active periods are marked by an increase in solar storms and flares.

Some of these flares can indeed influence Earth. When the sun releases electromagnetic particles in such a way that they interact with our atmosphere, solar storms can disrupt telecommunications, though there are ways to protect satellites and other electronics. These charged particles are also responsible for the aurora — the Northern and Southern Lights.

Predictions of a Dec. 21 solar storm that will devastate the planet are not based in reality, according to NASA scientists. This particular solar maximum is one of the “wimpiest” in recent history, according to NASA heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta, who spoke during an online panel on the Mayan apocalypse on Nov. 28. In other words, scientists have no reason to expect solar storms capable of disrupting our society.

MYTH: The Earth’s Magnetic Poles Will Flip

What is it with the Mayan apocalypse and electromagnetism? This rumor holds that the North and South Poles will suddenly and catastrophically change places on Dec. 21.

The idea isn’t as totally leftfield as it sounds: The Earth’s magnetic field does actually flip-flop occasionally, though not in the course of a day. The pole swaps happen over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, according to NASA. The switching of magnetic poles could lead to a slight increase in cosmic radiation, but previous flip-flops have not disrupted the life seen in the fossil record.

Predicting the magnetic-pole switch is also tough. The last swap occurred about 780,000 years ago, which puts the planet about due for another change in the next several thousand years. However, there has been at least one period where the magnetic poles stayed put for 30 million years.

MYTH: Planet X Will Collide With Earth

Planet X, sometimes known as Nibiru, does not exist. Nevertheless, some doomsday theorizers have predicted that on Dec. 21, this “rogue planet” will slam into Earth, annihilating all life.

Planet X rumors got their start in 1976, when the late author Zecharia Sitchin claimed to have translated a Sumerian text to rediscover the lost planet Nibiru, which allegedly orbits the sun once every 3,600 years — supposedly explaining why modern man and telescope had failed to notice this planetary neighbor. In 2003, self-described psychic and alien-channeler Nancy Lieder warned that this planet would collide with Earth. When that didn’t happen, the date got pushed back to 2012 to coincide with Mayan apocalypse myths.

Of course, a planet set on a collision course with Earth in mere days would be extremely visible to the naked eye. In fact, Nibiru should have shown up as nearly as bright as Mars in the night sky by April 2012, if that scenario were true. Given NASA’s capacity to peer into deep space, a nearby planet headed for Earth is not going to escape detection.

“We would have seen it years ago,” said Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office in Pasadena, Calif.

MYTH: The Planets Will Align

Another fear is that the planets will align on Dec. 21, somehow impacting our planet. This one is easy to debunk. Take it away, NASA:

“There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades,” according to the space agency’s 2012 doomsday myths webpage. “[E]ven if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible.”

There have been planetary alignments in 1962, 1982 and 2000, according to NASA, and we’re all still here.

MYTH: Total Earth Blackout

This rumor, circulating in spam emails, claims that NASA is predicting a total Earth blackout between Dec. 23 and Dec. 25. Way to ruin Christmas!

Some emails claim that this blackout will occur as the result of the sun and Earth aligning for the first time, while others spin a wild tale about Earth entering “a still ring” called the Photonic belt. Whatever the alleged cause, this is simply not going to happen, according to NASA.

“There is no such alignment,” agency officials write.

Owner of OpenTV slaps Netflix with patent lawsuit

 

By Samantha R. Selman

 

The owner of interactive television pioneer OpenTV sued Netflix Inc on Wednesday, alleging the company infringed on patents that cover technology underpinning the fast-growing Internet video sector.

Switzerland-based Kudelski SA, which owns OpenTV, said in its lawsuit that Netflix infringed on seven U.S. patents covering aspects of over-the-top TV technology (OTT), including: the use of viewer information to make recommendations; digital rights management; and video playback.

Kudelski tried for about a year to encourage Netflix to discuss licensing its patents, but the video streaming company has so far not played ball, according to the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, a common venue for patent cases.

“Companies like Netflix have, in essence, stood on the shoulders of giants, largely focusing their R&D efforts on aggregating these previously patented technologies and using them to provide a rich customer experience,” Kudelski said in the complaint.

Netflix spokesman Joris Evers declined to comment.

Netflix shares fell 1.7 percent to close at $93.9785 on Wednesday.

The suit comes amid a boom in digital TV shows and movies delivered over the Internet to smart TVs, tablets and smart phones. Netflix, whose iconic red envelopes have come to symbolize the DVD delivery-by-mail market, introduced video streaming in 2007, 10 years after the company was founded, and quickly grew into a market leader.

But the market is getting crowded, and Netflix is being chased by Amazon.com Inc and Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Vudu service, as well as streaming video website Hulu, which is owned by Walt Disney Co, News Corp and Comcast Corp.

Apple Inc, the world’s largest computer maker by market value, is also widely expected to enter the smart TV market, spurring further growth.

The Internet TV sector shares some attributes of the smartphone business, with over a decade of innovation and patents produced by companies that are no longer dominant.

Grant Moss, CEO of patent broker and advisory firm Adapt IP Ventures, expects a repeat of the recent smartphone patent wars, but on a smaller scale.

“The frequency of these cases will increase dramatically” because of recent, high-profile Internet video content distribution deals, new ways of making money in the sector and new entrants,” Moss said.

“But I don’t see the financial value of the individual cases being as significant as those in the smartphone market,” he added.

Kudelski, which has developed and acquired a range of movie and digital TV technologies over several decades, generates more than $700 million in annual revenue and employs about 3,000 people worldwide. The company is a player in streaming video by virtue of its 2010 acquisition of San Francisco-based OpenTV.

OpenTV, which began in 1996 as a joint venture between Thomson Multimedia and Sun Microsystems, develops software that helps run more than 200 million TV set-top boxes. It competes with NDS, which was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc for $5 billion in July.

Thomson Multimedia is not related to Thomson Reuters.

In May, Kudelski hired Joe Chernesky from Intellectual Ventures, a patent investment firm, to run an intellectual property unit managing a portfolio of more than 3,000 of the company’s patents. OpenTV owns more than 800 of these patents.

“We have been developing technologies for over 20 years to enable the delivery of video content and have an early and broad patent portfolio in the field,” said Chernesky. “We intend to aggressively defend our patents.”

NETFLIX PATENTS

Netflix owns 14 patents that focus mostly on technology supporting its DVD-by-mail business, such as online ordering and assembling an online movie queue. The company has one U.S. patent with claims related to video streaming, while Amazon has 22 U.S. patents with claims related to multimedia streaming, according to an early November review conducted by patent advisory and research firm Envision IP.

It usually takes several years to win approval for patents to support new technology, which is whyNetflix currently has more intellectual property backing its older business, according to Envision IP founder Maulin Shah.

Shah said Netflix has 32 pending patent applications that cover technologies to improve on-demand streaming video delivery. Netflix earlier this year also hired T.J. Angioletti, Oracle Corp’s chief intellectual property counsel, to help with its patent push.

Still, pending patents are usually of limited use in patent litigation and it is unclear whether Netflix’s applications will be approved, Shah added.

“It doesn’t really help them in lawsuits because they can’t use pending patents to counter-sue and fight back,” Shah said.

The lawsuit follows a string of negative news surrounding Netflix over the last year, including missed subscriber growth targets, an ill-fated attempt to split the DVD and streaming operations and a swooning stock price.

However, Netflix shares jumped earlier in December after the company unveiled a first-of-its-kind movie deal with Disney.

Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

By Richard Best

Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.

The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $830 million in financing.

The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.

Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.

Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.

Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.

“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.

The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $2.6 billion.

Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.

For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.

But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.

“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”

He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.

Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.

It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.

The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

State Department responds to claims that Clinton faked illness

By Mike Krumboltz

The State Department has rebutted another claim that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faked herconcussion while suffering from a stomach virus to avoid testifying Tuesday about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, earlier this year.

The latest assertion came from former U.S. diplomat John Bolton, who, during the Dec. 17 edition of Fox News’ “On the Record,” insinuated that Clinton’s “diplomatic illness”—in diplomatic circles, this is the feigning of an  illness to avoid an engagement—kept her from testifying.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Bolton’s suggestion was “completely untrue.”

Nuland continued: “We put out such a full statement Saturday of exactly what was going on because people speculate wildly. I can assure you, [Bolton is] not privy to any inside information. … It’s really unfortunate that in times like this people make wild speculation based on no information.”

Bolton’s claims came on the heels of an article in The Daily Caller by Jim Treacher, who wrote, “If she has a concussion, let’s see the medical report. Let’s see some proof that she’s not just stonewalling. If it’s true, then we can all wish her a speedy recovery. But it’s ridiculous to expect us to take her word for it.”

Conservative blogger Lucianne Goldberg earlier had tweeted a message comparing Clinton to a kid playing hooky. “Hillary has given us a great new excuse. Don’t call in with a cold or a bad tooth. Just say you have a concussion. It can last for days.”

And an opinion piece from the New York Post calls Clinton’s illness “one of the most transparent dodges in the history of diplomacy.”

On Tuesday, an independent U.S. panel faulted the State Department for systemic failures and “criticized senior U.S. State Department management for failing to react to security concerns raised by U.S. diplomats in Libya.” Following the report, Clinton began sending more security forces to diplomatic missions around the world.

Boehner to Obama: ‘Get serious’ about ‘fiscal cliff’

 

By Samantha R. Selman

 

Republican House Speaker John Boehner warned President Barack Obama on Wednesday that he can either accept a GOP alternative to a comprehensive “fiscal cliff” compromise or “be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

“I hope the president will get serious soon about providing, and working with us on, a balanced approach,” Boehner told reporters in a brief public appearance at which he took no questions.

The verbal hardball tactics came one day before the Republican-led House of Representative was to vote on the speaker’s “Plan B,” which would extend Bush-era tax cuts on income up to $1 million but would raise tax rates above that. His plan also keeps in place deep automatic defense and domestic spending cuts—the so-called sequester—that key Republicans have spent months denouncing as unacceptable and dangerous to national security.

“Tomorrow, the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American—99.81 percent of the American people,” Boehner said. “Then the president will have a decision to make: He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

The speaker’s remarks hinted at the pitched public relations battle over the fiscal cliff—across-the-board income tax hikes and deep government spending cuts that will be triggered if the White House and congressional Republicans can’t reach a deal. The combination of spending cuts and tax hikes could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession. Both would go into effect Jan. 1 barring aneleventh-hour compromise.

Republicans have squirmed for months in the face of opinion polls showing the public sides with Obama, who has accused the GOP of holding tax cuts that chiefly benefit the middle class hostage to secure tax cuts for the richest Americans. The president first called for extending tax cuts on income up to $250,000 annually per household, then in a concession to Republicans raised that to $400,000.

Boehner’s gambit also highlighted how he is in a political bind. Many conservatives in the House oppose any tax increase at all. On Wednesday, the anti-tax Club for Growth interest group warned House members to vote against the speaker’s plan. And some House Republicans remain opposed to the automatic defense cuts they say risk endangering national security.

But it’s also not lost on anyone that Boehner’s “Plan B” could turn out to the be the legislative vehicle for any final compromise deal. Once received by the Senate, lawmakers there could amend the package and send it back to the House—though that may be easier said than done.

(Roll Call ace reporter Niels Lesniewski lays out the parliamentary details here with characteristic clarity and thoroughness, noting that “Plan B” might actually prove to be “a much-needed Christmas present” to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.)

In some ways, Obama seems to be playing along with the idea that the time for talking is over and its now time to vote. During a press conference at the White House shortly before Boehner’s comments, the president signaled that he was done negotiating. “Take the deal,” he said.

As for a negotiated compromise? “I think the speaker would like to get that done,” Obama said.

At Least 4 Dead In Apparent Longmont Murder-Suicide

Police say a man who killed his ex-girlfriend and two of her relatives before fatally shooting himself had been accused of kidnapping the woman and released from jail just hours before the attack.

The Weld County Sheriff’s Department says 31-year-old Daniel Sanchez was released from the Boulder County Jail at 10 p.m. Monday.

At about 4 a.m. Tuesday, a 911 dispatcher received a desperate call from a woman who could be heard saying, “no, no, no” before the sound of a gunshot.

Authorities say Sanchez then took phone and told the emergency operator he shot three people. The dispatcher then heard another gunshot.

Killed were Sanchez’s ex-girlfriend, 25-year-old Beatriz Cintora-Silva; her sister, 22-year-old Maria Cintora-Silva; and her sister’s husband, 32-year-old Max Aguirre Ojeda.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Emergency phone line operators heard the sound of gunfire early Tuesday as a Colorado woman called 911 and was apparently killed by a man who then picked up the phone and told dispatchers he was going to kill himself before they heard the sound of another shot, authorities said.

Investigators think the unidentified woman and man were among four people found dead at a home near Longmont, about 35 miles north of Denver, in what police are characterizing as a murder-suicide.

Operators heard the woman scream “no, no, no,” cries that were immediately followed by what sounded like a gunshot, Weld County sheriff’s spokesman Tim Schwartz said. A man then took the phone and apparently shot himself as dispatchers remained on the line, Schwartz said. That was the end of the call, he said.

Authorities have not identified the victims or the man they suspect as the shooter. The dead included two men and two women. Police said they are convinced the gunman was among those killed.

There were no apparent survivors, Schwartz said.

It was unclear whether all four lived in the home, Schwartz said.

Investigators think they have uncovered a motive for the shootings, Schwartz said. He refused to release such details, however.

A handgun believed to be murder weapon was recovered.

As investigators searched the home, a woman slipped under the crime tape and ran toward the house. The unidentified woman was restrained by police, fell to the ground on her knees and began crying before being led away.

A pickup truck with Texas license plates, meanwhile, sat idling in the driveway while police waited for permission to enter the vehicle. A neighbor said it had been running since morning.

Several neighbors described what happened around 4 a.m. Tuesday.

Joyce Vibbert said she heard three gunshots and a woman’s voice.

“It was just screaming. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It was just screaming,” she said.

Vibbert said she couldn’t see what was happening from her bedroom window.

Kathy Tubb said she heard the shots at about the same time.

She said when her husband went outside to warm up the car to go to work he saw a policeman wearing a helmet and armed with a rifle standing in the street. Tubb said her husband was worried there might be a gunman still on the loose.

Desirae Swazoe said she awoke shortly after 4 a.m. and heard repeated shouting, “Weld County Sheriff’s Department! Open the back door! Do it now!”

Fear of Being Committed May Have Caused Connecticut Gunman to Snap

By Bob Dillan

The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families.

Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.

“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,” Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”

A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza’s anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting.

 

“He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry.”

– Joshua Flashman, Newtown resident familiar with Lanza family

 

Flashman was told Nancy Lanza had begun filing paperwork to get conservatorship over her troubled son, but that could not be confirmed because a court official told FoxNews.com such records are sealed. The move would have been necessary for her to gain the legal right to commit an adult to a hospital or psychiatric facility against his will. A competency hearing had not yet been held.

Adam Lanza attended the Sandy Hook School as a boy, according to Flashman, who said Nancy Lanza had volunteered there for several years. Two law enforcement sources said they believed Nancy Lanza had been volunteering with kindergartners at the school. Most of Lanza’s victims were first graders sources believe Nancy Lanza may have worked with last year.

Flashman said Nancy Lanza was also good friends with the school’s principal and psychologist—both of whom were killed in the shooting rampage.

“Adam Lanza believed she cared more for the children than she did for him, and the reason he probably thought this [was the fact that] she was petitioning for conservatorship and wanted to have him committed,” Flashman said. “I could understand how he might perceive that—that his mom loved him less than she loved the kids, loved the school. But she did love him. But he was a troubled kid and she probably just couldn’t take care of him by herself anymore.”

The Washington Post reported that the distraught mother had considered moving with her son to Washington state, where she had found a school she thought could help him. Either way, according to Flashman, Nancy Lanza was at her wit’s end.

A separate neighborhood source also told FoxNews.com that Nancy Lanza had come to the realization she could no longer handle her son alone. She was caring for him full-time, but told friends she needed help. She was planning to have him involuntarily hospitalized, according to the source, who did not know if she had taken formal steps.

Multiple sources told FoxNews.com Adam Lanza suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and unspecified mental and emotional problems.

Adam Lanza has also been described by those who knew him as highly intelligent, and a spokesman for Western Connecticut State University told The Associated Press he took college classes there when he was 16, earning a 3.26 grade point average and excelling at a computer course.

Alan Diaz, 20, who was friends with Adam Lanza at Newtown High School, said the Lanza he knew was ill-at-ease socially, but not a monster.

“He was a wicked smart kid,” Diaz told FoxNews.com by email. “When I first met him, he wouldn’t even look at you when you tried to talk to him. Over the year I knew him, he became used to me and my other friends, he eventually could have full conversations with us.

“I’ve heard him laugh, he has even comforted me once in a hard time I had,” Diaz said. “A big part of me wishes I never dropped contact with him after he left high school, felt like I could have done something.”

Flashman said nobody will completely understand why Adam did what he did.

“No one can explain Adam Lanza besides God and Adam Lanza, and I don’t even think Adam Lanza could explain Adam Lanza, to be honest with you.”