WASHINGTON (AP) ? Seeking to spur fresh action on gun legislation, Vice President Joe Biden is meeting at the White House with victims groups and gun-safety organizations.
Wednesday's meeting is to be part of a series of gatherings Biden is conducting this week at the White House, aimed at building consensus around proposals to curb gun violence following the horrific elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The vice president will meet Thursday with the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups. Meetings with representatives from the video-game and entertainment industries are also planned.
President Barack Obama wants Biden to report back to him with policy proposals by the end of the month. Obama has vowed to move swiftly on the recommendations, a package expected to include both legislative proposals and executive action.
"He is mindful of the need to act," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.
But as the shock and sorrow over the Newtown, Conn., shooting fade, the tough fight facing the White House and gun-control backers is growing clearer. Gun-rights advocates, including the powerful NRA, are digging in against tighter gun restrictions, conservative groups are launching pro-gun initiatives, and the Senate's top Republican has warned it could be spring before Congress begins considering any gun legislation.
"The biggest problem we have at the moment is spending and debt," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Sunday. "That's going to dominate the Congress between now and the end of March. None of these issues will have the kind of priority as spending and debt over the next two or three months."
The killing of 6- and 7-year-olds at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 appeared to stir a deep reaction from the White House and Capitol Hill. Obama pushed gun control to the top of his domestic agenda for the first time and pledged to put the full weight of his presidency behind the issue. And some Republican and conservative lawmakers with strong gun-rights records also took the extraordinary step of calling for a discussion on new measures.
But other gun-rights advocates have shown less flexibility. The NRA has rejected stricter gun legislation and suggested instead that the government put armed guards in every school in America as a way to curb violence. A coalition of conservative groups is also organizing a "Gun Appreciation Day" later this month, to coincide with Obama's inauguration.
The president hopes to announce his administration's next steps to tackle gun violence shortly after he is sworn in for a second term on Jan. 21.
Obama wants Congress to reinstate a ban on military-style assault weapons, close loopholes that allow gun buyers to skirt background checks and restrict high-capacity magazines. Other recommendations to the Biden group include making gun-trafficking a felony, getting the Justice Department to prosecute people caught lying on gun background-check forms and ordering federal agencies to send data to the National Gun Background Check Database.
Some of those steps could be taken through executive action, without the approval of Congress. White House officials say Obama will not finalize any actions until receiving Biden's recommendations.
Gun-rights lawmakers and outside groups have insisted that any policy response to the Newtown shooting also include an examination of mental health policies and the impact of violent movies and video games. To those people, the White House has pledged a comprehensive response.
"It is not a problem that can be solved by any specific action or single action that the government might take," Carney said. "It's a problem that encompasses issues of mental health, of education, as well as access to guns."
In addition to Biden's meetings this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will meet with parent and teacher groups, while Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates.
The White House said other meetings are also scheduled with community organizations, business owners and religious leaders.
California Gov. Jerry Brown discusses pension reform during a news conference on August 28, 2012 in Los Angeles.
California Gov. Jerry Brown told reporters at a news conference Tuesday morning that he has completed his treatment for prostate cancer.
When asked by a reporter for an update on Brown?s treatment, Brown said, ?It?s finished.? The reporter asked if he was better, and Brown jokingly responded, ?You choose.?
Another reporter called out, ?Do some pushups for us!? Brown said, ?I?m ready, I?m raring to go, and don?t expect me to leave too soon.?
The rest of the news conference was about California?s prison system.
Brown?s office announced last month that Brown was undergoing treatment. It was treated with ?a short course of conventional radiotherapy,? Brown?s oncologist Dr. Eric Small said, with an ?excellent? prognosis. There weren?t expected to be any significant side effects, Small said.
Chemists devise inexpensive, benchtop method for marking and selecting cellsPublic release date: 8-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
LA JOLLA, CA January 8, 2013 - Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found an easier way to perform one of the most fundamental tasks in molecular biology. Their new method allows scientists to add a marker to certain cells, so that these cells may be easily located and/or selected out from a larger cell population.
The technique, which is described in a recent issue of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, makes use of the tight binding of two proteins that are cheaply obtainable but are not found in human or other mammalian cells. As such, it has advantages over existing cell-marking techniques.
"This new technique is cheap, easy and sensitive," said TSRI Institute Professor Richard A. Lerner, who is the senior author of the new report. "The method should be useful in a variety of applications that require separating out certain types of cells."
Looking for a Better Way
The best-known cell marker in use today is GFP (green fluorescent protein), a jellyfish protein that emits a distinctive green light when illuminated by certain other light wavelengths. When scientists want to add a new gene to cells, for example to produce a therapeutic protein, they often construct a genetic sequence that also includes the GFP gene. Thus the cells that successfully produce the new protein will also produce GFP, whose fluorescence allows these cells to be identified and even sorted out from a larger population.
But fluorescence-based cell sorting is relatively expensive and cumbersome. Alternative cell-marking techniques use marker molecules to which antibodies or metals will bind tightly, but these are apt to have unwanted side effects on the cells that they mark. Lerner's team, led by first author Yingjie Peng, a postdoctoral fellow, set out to invent a better method.
The new method exploits a special property of chitinase enzymes, which evolved to break down chitina tough, sugar-derived material found, for example, in crab shells, squid beaks and the cell walls of fungi. In addition to a main chitin-breaking domain, chitinases have another active structure, a "chitin binding domain" (ChBD). "It makes a super-strong bond with chitin," said Peng. In recent years, scientists have begun to use this high-affinity binding of ChBD and chitin as a marker system, typically for selecting ChBD-tagged proteins in a lab dish. The new method uses ChBD to mark and select cells.
A Powerful Tool
In the basic technique, a new gene can be added to cells within a larger DNA vector that also includes the genetic sequences for ChBD and GFP. The ChBD molecule will be produced in such a way that it ends up being held on the outer surface of its host cell's plasma membraneand the GFP molecule will sit just inside the membrane. The GFP serves as a visual beacon, while the ChBD serves as a handy gripping point for cell selection.
After exposing a culture of test cells to this experimental ChBD-containing vector, the scientists was able to see, via the GFP tags, which cells were expressing them, and was able to select them out easily, with high sensitivity, using magnetic beads coated with chitin. "This is a relatively easy benchtop method," Peng said. Importantly, these selected cells could produce progeny cells that seemed normal and healthy.
Because the ChBD marker, in the vector, is produced in a way that anchors it to a cell's membrane, it also can serve as a powerful tool for selecting just the membrane fraction of a sample of cellular material. Peng and his colleagues demonstrated this using chitin beads to quickly isolate a pure fraction of membrane material from ChBD-marked test cells.
Cellulase enzymes, which break down the ubiquitous plant compound cellulose, also have a high-affinity cellulase-binding domain, which can be employed in the same way as the ChBD.
The scientists expect that the new cell-marking method will help to streamline another major molecular biology technique, which was pioneered by the Lerner laboratory in parallel with the group of Sir Gregory Winter at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain. This technique allows scientists to produce very large and diverse libraries of antibody arms, and to sift through them, or "pan"as gold miners pan for nuggetsfor those that might be of use, for example in therapies. ChBD-based markers should be useful in boosting the efficiency of this panning process, said Peng.
The Lerner laboratory is also investigating the potential use of ChBD-based cell marking in living animals, for example to track the fates of selected cell types throughout an animal's lifespan.
###
Those interested in using the new technology are invited to contact TSRI's Office of Technology Development, at (858) 784-8140 or through the department's webpage at http://www.scripps.edu/research/technology/contactus.html.
Other contributors to the study, "Engineering Cell Surfaces for Orthogonal Selectability," were Teresa M. Jones and Diana I. Ruiz of the TSRI Department of Chemistry, and Dae Hee Kim of the Scripps Korea Antibody Institute. For more information on the paper, see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201201844/abstract
The research was supported by a grant from Scripps Korea Antibody Institute.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Chemists devise inexpensive, benchtop method for marking and selecting cellsPublic release date: 8-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
LA JOLLA, CA January 8, 2013 - Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found an easier way to perform one of the most fundamental tasks in molecular biology. Their new method allows scientists to add a marker to certain cells, so that these cells may be easily located and/or selected out from a larger cell population.
The technique, which is described in a recent issue of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, makes use of the tight binding of two proteins that are cheaply obtainable but are not found in human or other mammalian cells. As such, it has advantages over existing cell-marking techniques.
"This new technique is cheap, easy and sensitive," said TSRI Institute Professor Richard A. Lerner, who is the senior author of the new report. "The method should be useful in a variety of applications that require separating out certain types of cells."
Looking for a Better Way
The best-known cell marker in use today is GFP (green fluorescent protein), a jellyfish protein that emits a distinctive green light when illuminated by certain other light wavelengths. When scientists want to add a new gene to cells, for example to produce a therapeutic protein, they often construct a genetic sequence that also includes the GFP gene. Thus the cells that successfully produce the new protein will also produce GFP, whose fluorescence allows these cells to be identified and even sorted out from a larger population.
But fluorescence-based cell sorting is relatively expensive and cumbersome. Alternative cell-marking techniques use marker molecules to which antibodies or metals will bind tightly, but these are apt to have unwanted side effects on the cells that they mark. Lerner's team, led by first author Yingjie Peng, a postdoctoral fellow, set out to invent a better method.
The new method exploits a special property of chitinase enzymes, which evolved to break down chitina tough, sugar-derived material found, for example, in crab shells, squid beaks and the cell walls of fungi. In addition to a main chitin-breaking domain, chitinases have another active structure, a "chitin binding domain" (ChBD). "It makes a super-strong bond with chitin," said Peng. In recent years, scientists have begun to use this high-affinity binding of ChBD and chitin as a marker system, typically for selecting ChBD-tagged proteins in a lab dish. The new method uses ChBD to mark and select cells.
A Powerful Tool
In the basic technique, a new gene can be added to cells within a larger DNA vector that also includes the genetic sequences for ChBD and GFP. The ChBD molecule will be produced in such a way that it ends up being held on the outer surface of its host cell's plasma membraneand the GFP molecule will sit just inside the membrane. The GFP serves as a visual beacon, while the ChBD serves as a handy gripping point for cell selection.
After exposing a culture of test cells to this experimental ChBD-containing vector, the scientists was able to see, via the GFP tags, which cells were expressing them, and was able to select them out easily, with high sensitivity, using magnetic beads coated with chitin. "This is a relatively easy benchtop method," Peng said. Importantly, these selected cells could produce progeny cells that seemed normal and healthy.
Because the ChBD marker, in the vector, is produced in a way that anchors it to a cell's membrane, it also can serve as a powerful tool for selecting just the membrane fraction of a sample of cellular material. Peng and his colleagues demonstrated this using chitin beads to quickly isolate a pure fraction of membrane material from ChBD-marked test cells.
Cellulase enzymes, which break down the ubiquitous plant compound cellulose, also have a high-affinity cellulase-binding domain, which can be employed in the same way as the ChBD.
The scientists expect that the new cell-marking method will help to streamline another major molecular biology technique, which was pioneered by the Lerner laboratory in parallel with the group of Sir Gregory Winter at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain. This technique allows scientists to produce very large and diverse libraries of antibody arms, and to sift through them, or "pan"as gold miners pan for nuggetsfor those that might be of use, for example in therapies. ChBD-based markers should be useful in boosting the efficiency of this panning process, said Peng.
The Lerner laboratory is also investigating the potential use of ChBD-based cell marking in living animals, for example to track the fates of selected cell types throughout an animal's lifespan.
###
Those interested in using the new technology are invited to contact TSRI's Office of Technology Development, at (858) 784-8140 or through the department's webpage at http://www.scripps.edu/research/technology/contactus.html.
Other contributors to the study, "Engineering Cell Surfaces for Orthogonal Selectability," were Teresa M. Jones and Diana I. Ruiz of the TSRI Department of Chemistry, and Dae Hee Kim of the Scripps Korea Antibody Institute. For more information on the paper, see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201201844/abstract
The research was supported by a grant from Scripps Korea Antibody Institute.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
President Barack Obama listens in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, where he announced that he is nominating Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, center, as the new CIA director; and former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, right, as the new defense secretary.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
President Barack Obama listens in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, where he announced that he is nominating Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, center, as the new CIA director; and former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, right, as the new defense secretary.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
President Barack Obama and his choice for Defense Secretary, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, left, listen as the president's choice for CIA Director, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, right, speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 7, 2013, where the president made the announcement. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A Republican senator is calling for a delay in confirming President Barack Obama's pick for CIA director until the administration provides answers on the deadly Sept. 11 assault in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that his support for delaying the nomination was not a reflection on John Brennan, whom Obama tapped on Monday, but rather the only recourse to get information on the raid on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
"The stonewalling on Benghazi by the Obama administration must come to an end," Graham said in a statement.
Republicans have argued that the administration tried to downplay that the attack was an act of terrorism in the weeks before the November election, even though Obama used that term in the days after the raid.
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice relied on talking points from the intelligence community to say in television interviews on Sept. 16 that the attack may have been a protest that got out of hand. Rice's incorrect explanation likely cost her a chance to be nominated as the next secretary of state.
Graham said he wants answers on who changed Rice's talking points and deleted references to al-Qaida. He pointed out that lawmakers were told that the director of national intelligence deleted the references, then were told it was the FBI. Hours after a meeting with Rice, Congress was informed that the CIA had changed the talking points.
"This ever-changing story should be resolved," said the South Carolina lawmaker, who is up for re-election next year. "It is imperative we understand who changed the talking points just weeks before a presidential election and why."
Brennan was expected to have an easier time on the path to Senate confirmation than Chuck Hagel, Obama's choice to run the Pentagon. A handful of Republicans have announced their opposition to the former GOP colleague, and several skeptical Democrats reserved judgment until Hagel explains his views on Israel and Iran.
The concerns about Hagel complicate his path to Senate confirmation but are not necessarily calamitous as the White House pushes for the first Vietnam War veteran to oversee a military emerging from two wars and staring at deep budget cuts.
Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, is expected to be hit with questions about torture and administration leaks of secret information. Graham's demands on the Libya raid could stall the nomination.
In announcing the nominations in the East Room on Monday, Obama urged the Senate to move quickly.
"When it comes to national security, we don't like to leave a lot of gaps between the time that one set of leaders transitions out and another transitions in," the president said.
Moments after Obama announced his selection of Hagel and called him "the leader that our troops deserve," some Senate Republicans voiced opposition to the former Nebraska lawmaker who spent 12 years in the Senate.
"Given Chuck Hagel's statements and actions on a nuclear Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, I think his confirmation would send exactly the wrong message to our allies and enemies alike," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said in a statement. "Israel, our strongest ally in the region, is dealing with a lot of threat and uncertainty right now; Hagel would make that even worse."
Other Senate Republicans, including the No. 2 GOP lawmaker, John Cornyn of Texas, new member Ted Cruz of Texas and Mississippi's Roger Wicker, signaled they would vote against the nomination.
Hagel has upset some Israel backers with his comment about the "Jewish lobby," his votes against unilateral sanctions against Iran while backing international penalties on the regime in Tehran and his criticism of talk of a military strike by either the U.S. or Israel against Iran.
He also upset gay rights groups over past comments, including his opposition in 1998 to President Bill Clinton's choice of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. He referred to Hormel as "openly, aggressively gay." Hagel recently apologized, saying his comments were "insensitive."
Those remarks and actions have created fierce opposition from some pro-Israel groups, criticism from some Republicans and unease among some congressional Democrats.
The Log Cabin Republicans took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post highlighting their opposition to Hagel, and Gregory T. Angelo, interim executive director of the gay rights group, said the gay and lesbian grassroots organization is considering other steps in a campaign against Hagel's nomination.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who does not have a vote on the nomination, called Hagel the "wrong man" for the job and complained that "his inflammatory statements about Israel are well outside the mainstream."
In an interview with the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star, Hagel said his statements have been distorted and there is "not one shred of evidence that I'm anti-Israeli, not one (Senate) vote that matters that hurt Israel."
In a critical sign of support for Hagel's prospects, the 66-year-old moderate Republican attracted words of praise from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Intelligence panel.
Levin called Hagel "well-qualified." Feinstein described him as "a knowledgeable and independent voice with a strong grasp of the pressing national security issues facing our country." Reid said "few nominees have such a combination of strategic and personal knowledge of our national defense needs."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Hagel "is a combat veteran who still carries shrapnel in his body from his wounds. He will not need on-the-job training."
Several Democrats, most notably Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, and a number of Republicans, including Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona, said they would await the Senate process and the opportunity to question Hagel. That raises the stakes for his private meetings with senators and his confirmation hearing in the next few weeks before the Armed Services Committee.
While some opposition was expected for Obama's nominee, no senator has threatened to block the selection. Republican and Democratic congressional aides said the White House wouldn't have put forth the nomination if it didn't think it had the votes for Hagel's confirmation. Democrats hold a 55-45 advantage in the Senate.
Former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., himself a wounded Vietnam veteran, said he thinks Hagel "has to clarify" his positions on issues like Iran and Israel.
But Cleland also said in an interview on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday that Hagel is battle-tested and ready for the challenges of a confirmation process, accusing the Nebraskan's critics of "swatting at nothing, shadow-boxing."
___
Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Lolita C. Baldor, Lara Jakes and Connie Cass contributed to this report.
Dear Editor, It is sad and of serious concern that Guyanese society is experiencing moral decay. ?The behaviour displayed by many Guyanese has drifted far from the norm and is skewed towards severe dysfunction.?For example, many Guyanese are not hesitant to show a lack of consideration for each other, thus resulting in abuse, be it [...]
Getting hot in the final 4 regular-season games doesn?t necessarily mean playoff success Ezra Shaw / Getty Images Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos have won eight straight games. ANALYSIS By Scott Kacsmar updated 4:16 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2012 ?You want to be playing your best football in December.? Every NFL fan has heard [...]
Posted by DreamKing23
2 hours, 29 minutes ago
Dead or Alive 5 will be receiving a ver. 1.03 update that will allow players to record and upload their matches online directly from the game. Xbox 360 users will be able to upload their fights on to Facebook while PlayStation 3 users [...]
? Friday?s LogicBUY Deal is the configurable 15.6? ?Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition Core i7 1080p Laptop for $849.99. ?Features: Core i7-3632QM 2.2GHz Quad-core CPU and 8GB 1600MHz RAM 750GB 5400RPM hard drive 2GB Radeon HD 7730M discrete graphics and 1080p display Four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI v1.4a, and 8-in-1 card reader HD webcam Waves [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama will attend a memorial service Sunday in Newtown, Conn., the site of Friday?s deadly elementary school shooting. Twenty-six people, including 20 children, were killed when a man opened fire inside the school. Hours after the shooting, a tearful Obama said he grieved first as a father. In those remarks [...]
Main Street Partnership President Steven LaTourette (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington-based group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word "Republican" from its title and welcome center-right Democrats in 2013, Yahoo News has learned.
The organization's board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as "The Main Street Partnership." The group's new president, former Ohio Republican Rep.?Steven LaTourette, told Yahoo News that he plans to begin conversations with Blue Dog Democrats and centrist groups in the coming months.
"The goal is to try and fill the void that is the middle," LaTourette, who resigned from Congress this year, said. "The American political system is like a doughnut: You've got sides, but you don't have anything in the middle, and it would be my goal to work with Republicans and Democrats who want to find the path forward to getting things done and compromise."
The Main Street Partnership will also expand its super PAC, Defending Main Street, to aid center-right members of both parties, LaTourette said, adding, "It's not going to be focused so much on party as it is on protecting people from the right and left extremes if they choose to do the right things."
In Congress, LaTourette was known to vote against party leadership: He opposed a measure that would strip federal funding of National Public Radio in 2011, and he was one of just two Republicans who did not support censuring Attorney General Eric Holder.
Current members of the Main Street organization include Republican Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee;? and? Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers of Washington, who was named chairman of the House Republican Conference in November.
Our Windows Phone-loving pals at WPCentral have found themselves in quite the pickle. First there's the whole to-do over YouTube and the fact that Google's not opening up its metadata to Windows Phone, so third-party apps can't search videos as well as we can on Android. (Or in the iOS YouTube app, for that matter.) Now they can't even use Google Maps. Not that there's been an official Windows Phone version of Google Maps -- nor do we really expect one anytime soon -- but for some reason pointing Internet Explorer to maps.google.com redirects back to the mobile verison of Google's home page.
Shenanigans? Or Gremlins? We're willing to bet it's just a hiccup and that Google's not shutting out Windows Phone from Google Maps, but it's an inconvenience, to say the least. And Gizmodo says this actually has been the case from the start. (Though that's apparently not true.) On the other hand, WPCentral's Daniel Rubino questions "why you would want to use Google’s less-than-awesome mapping service through a browser." With an attitude like that, pal, don't expect the boys and girls at Google to bend over backwards for you on a Friday.
A new book of Evolution of Innovation management will be published on the 15th of February 2013, edited by Alexander Brem and Eric Viardot. The book is about the fact that Innovation is seen as a key driver for performance and growth in business. It provides a strong competitive advantage and is one of the best ways to speed up the rate of change and adaptation to the global environment. Concurrently, the topic of innovation is also gaining increased visibility and interest among academic communities worldwide.
However, some of the challenges of innovating are remarkably consistent and recent times have shown the emergence of new ways for stimulating and
managing the innovation process, especially from an international perspective. Even if these processes are taking place in very different industries, there are many parallels in successfully managing them.
The new book explores these new routes and assesses their value both for markets and companies. More specifically, the book is organized around three themes: ? Innovation Strategies ? Innovation Management Tools ? International Perspectives
Together with Robin Chu (team member in my Business Innovation team and one of our top strategic analyst) I wrote chapter 15: ?Creating an Environment for Successful Innovation - A Management Consultant's Perspective?
To view detailed content of the book, please visit Palgrave
Notes on Contributors
Symbiotic Innovation: Getting the Most Out of Collaboration; R.J.Thomas & Y.Wind
Performance Measurement of Co-Creation Initiatives ? A Conceptual Framework for Measuring the Value of Idea Contests; V.Bilgram
Measuring the Success of Open Innovation; E.Brau, R.Reinhardt & S.Gurtner
Can SMEs in Traditional Industries be Creative?; J.M.Zabala-Iturriagagoitia
Scenario-based Learning Architectures as a Management Tool; N.Pfeffermann & H.Breuer
Social Network Analysis ? an Important Tool for Innovation Management; G.Drexler & B.Janse
The Evolution of Mobile Social Networks through Technological Innovation; V.Ratten
Exploring the Role of Early Customers in the Commercialization of Innovation; F.Frattini, G.Colombo & C.Dell'Era
Managing Communities of Practice to Support Innovation; S.Borzillo & R.Kaminska
Joining Innovation Efforts using both Feed-forward and Feedback Learning: the Case of Japanese and Korean Universities; I.Oh
(Reuters) - India's Infosys Ltd said on Friday a newspaper report it was planning to fire up to 5,000 poorly performing workers was "wrong", although it encourages "chronic under-performers" to leave as part of its staff management.
Infosys, India's second-largest software services exporter, was sacking up to 5,000 poor performers to trim costs, the Economic Times reported earlier.
Infosys, which is also listed in the United States, added the number of potential under-performers that could leave the company was "significantly lower" than the 5,000 quoted in the media report.
(Reporting by Harichandan Arakali in BANGALORE; Editing by Rafael Nam)
FILE - This Dec. 30, 2012 file photo shows Kansas City Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli before an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos in Denver. Pioli is out as general manager of the Chiefs. The team announced in a statement Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, that the two sides have "mutually parted ways" after four seasons marked by poor personnel decisions and failed coaching hires.(AP Photo/Joe Mahoney, File)
FILE - This Dec. 30, 2012 file photo shows Kansas City Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli before an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos in Denver. Pioli is out as general manager of the Chiefs. The team announced in a statement Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, that the two sides have "mutually parted ways" after four seasons marked by poor personnel decisions and failed coaching hires.(AP Photo/Joe Mahoney, File)
ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND EDITIONS, DEC. 29-30 - FILE - In this Dec. 8, 2012, file photo, Kansas City Chiefs' Jamaal Charles, right, stands by as team general manager Scott Pioli, left, hugs Whitney Charles following the funeral service for Kasandra Perkins at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. Perkins was shot and killed last on Dec. 1, by her boyfriend, Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher, before he proceeded to kill himself. Whitney Charles is Perkins' first cousin and wife of Jamaal Charles. (AP Photo/Jack Plunkett, File)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) ? Scott Pioli is out as general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs, who have been negotiating the past two days with Andy Reid to become their next coach.
Pioli and the team "mutually parted ways," the Chiefs said in a statement Friday. The decision came after four tumultuous seasons marked by poor draft choices, ineffective free-agent moves, failed coaching hires and a growing fan rebellion.
"I truly apologize for not getting the job done," Pioli said.
The Chiefs fired coach Romeo Crennel on Monday after finishing 2-14, matching the worst record in their 53-year history. Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said other changes could be made, and indicated that Pioli's future could be determined by their next coach.
A person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press the team is nearing a deal with Reid, who was fired after 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. The person spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because negotiations were ongoing. It is believed that Reid would prefer to work with his own general manager.
"After several productive conversations, we made the difficult decision to part ways with Scott Pioli and allow him to pursue other opportunities," Hunt said in a statement Friday.
"This was a difficult decision for Scott as well," Hunt said. "He has a great deal of appreciation for the history of this franchise, for our players, coaches and employees, and especially our great fans."
Kansas City will have the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, and with five players voted to the Pro Bowl, there are certainly pieces in place for the Chiefs to make rapid improvement.
But most of those Pro Bowl players were drafted by Pioli's predecessor, Carl Peterson. The former Patriots executive struggled to find impact talent, particularly at quarterback, while cycling through coaches and fostering a climate of dread within the entire organization.
Numerous longtime staff members were fired upon Pioli's arrival, and his inability to connect with fans resulted in unrest unlike anything the franchise has known. Some of them even paid for banners to be towed behind planes before home games asking that he be fired.
Those fans finally got their wish.
The biggest reason ultimately wasn't the banners and posters, but by the performance of the Chiefs. And that was a reflection of the roster Pioli assembled, one that looked good on paper but not on the field.
Things were no better away from the field, either.
On Dec. 1, linebacker Jovan Belcher shot the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, Kasandra Perkins, at a home not far from Arrowhead Stadium. He then drove to the team's practice facility and was confronted by Pioli, Crennel and defensive coordinator Gary Gibbs.
After thanking the three of them for giving him a chance in the NFL, Belcher turned around in the parking lot, kneeled down and shot himself in the head.
Pioli hasn't spoken publicly since then but issued a statement Friday in which he thanked the organization for giving him an opportunity to be its GM.
"The bottom line is that I did not accomplish all of what I set out to do," Pioli said. "To the Hunt family ? to the great fans of the Kansas City Chiefs ? to the players, all employees and alumni, I truly apologize for not getting the job done."
Pioli often spoke of putting together "the right 53," but he routinely failed to do so.
His biggest move upon being hired was trading for Patriots backup Matt Cassel and then giving him a $63 million, six-year deal. Cassel went to the Pro Bowl in 2010, when the Chiefs won a surprising AFC West title, but he struggled so mightily that he was benched this season.
Many of Pioli's moves in free agency also backfired.
Tight end Kevin Boss sustained a season-ending head injury in Week 2, running back Peyton Hillis was a shadow of his former self, right tackle Eric Winston got into a messy situation by calling out Chiefs fans during an early season loss, and cornerback Stanford Routt was cut under mysterious circumstances despite signing an $18 million, three-year contract.
One of his biggest shortcomings was in the draft.
He wasted the third overall pick in 2009 on defensive end Tyson Jackson, who has struggled to become an every-down player. The only other player who has made a contribution from Pioli's first draft has been kicker Ryan Succop, their seventh-round selection.
Pioli fared better in 2010, when he nabbed Pro Bowl safety Eric Berry in the first round, but the past two years have been a disappointment. Wide receiver Jon Baldwin, his first-round pick in 2011, has barely made an impact, and defensive tackle Dontari Poe ? the 11th overall pick last April ? failed to make the kind of impression the Chiefs had hoped.
Pioli didn't fare much better when it came to coaches.
He fired Herm Edwards soon after he was hired and chose Todd Haley as the replacement, but their relationship was strained from the start. Haley was fired last December and Crennel made the interim coach, and then Pioli made the move permanent a few weeks after the season ended.
While beloved and respected by his players, Crennel struggled in his second stint as a head coach, and was dismissed after a 2-14 finish ? only the third time in team history the Chiefs failed to win at least three games in a season.
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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
It's a tough economic environment for hospitals. Bottom lines are being squeezed, and changes in health care laws and priorities mean that they're having to change everything, focusing more on quality than quantity and profit.
Some hospitals are taking an innovative approach to making money beyond just patient care, by using one of their biggest assets: personnel ? the doctors, nurses, and other staff who are on the front lines providing health care, and commercializing the ideas they have for making it better.
The Cleveland Clinic has focused a great deal on this area, to the point where it actually provides staff and expertise to other hospitals that want to do the same thing. We spoke to Dr. Delos Cosgrove, the most successful inventor in the clinic's history and its current CEO; and Chris Coburn, the Executive Director of CCF Innovations, the technology commercialization wing of the Clinic.
Initial failures, then increasing success
"It's been a very long journey actually," Dr. Cosgrove told us. "The journey started when, in my first five years at the Clinic which was 30 years ago now, I developed with another guy a closed loop system for giving a drug. So, we essentially learned about how to keep a patient 's blood pressure at a certain level by putting a drug in. We developed it, we found a patent lawyer to do it, I negotiated with companies and convinced a company to manufacture it, put together a payment program, and one day I walked in and gave the CEO a check for 50 grand. That was more than my salary at the time, I thought it was a really big deal.?And he said, "Jeez, we could make some money out of this," and I said, "Yeah, we probably could."
But the path from the idea and that initial success wasn't an easy one. They started out working with a venture capitalist who was on the board, but they couldn't really get things off the ground. "For 20 years we couldn't quite get it right," Dr. Cosgrove said.
It started to go right when he hired Chris Coburn. Over the last decade or so since he was charged with working with doctors and staff to develop and commercialize tech, they've gotten almost 500 patents, another 1,400 have been filed for, and they've spun out 52 companies.?
"When I started, we had a secretary and a part-time administrative type. Today we have about 65 people. It's been, as they say, an interesting journey," Coburn said.
Beyond the numbers, what Dr. Cosgrove calls an "interesting validation" of the idea was that, after realizing how hard building such a system is, other hospitals, including the largest health care providers in New York and the Washington, D.C. areas, are bringing the Cleveland Clinic's model and staff into their hospitals.?
Coburn himself gives Dr. Cosgrove a lot of the credit.?
"When the CEO expresses themself on an issue like this, the organization really follows. Having for the last 8 years, the most innovative, the most prolific inventor in the history of the Clinic as CEO has given us an added leg up," Coburn said, "because not only do you have it imbued in the culture, you have a pretty clear message and a role model in the CEO."
A supply of highly educated, highly trained, very smart people.
The potential is easy to see. Hospitals, especially prestigious ones like the Cleveland Clinic, have a tremendous stock of brilliant, inventive people.
"You think about becoming a physician in the U.S. or even a nurse, you survive one of the most Darwinian progressions in human society today," Coburn argues.
It's an incredibly rigorous academic program and training process, one that only the most intelligent and dedicated people make it through. But after that training, doctors and nurses?often end up doing certain repeated tasks for years and years.?
That's a huge potential resource. ?
"So then you become a physician, lets say you're a surgeon. You are typically doing kind of the same thing every day after a while if you're specializing. If you think about it from the standpoint of potential for innovation, a really smart, very highly educated person doing the same thing, you just naturally believe that that's going to lead to some idea of how to do it better, and to me that's very intriguing," Coburn said. "I speak to the incoming docs. I always ask them 'how many people in the room think you're innovators?' Almost always, it's [fewer] than half. I make that point to them; how can you not be?"
It's about asking the right questions, Coburn said.?"How does that self-awareness bubble up? And then how do you get them on that arc?"
The key is changing how these doctors and surgeons think, and it takes consistent effort to do that. The Cleveland Clinic does that with frequent training and by providing successful role models. "We want to communicate the message on a near continuous basis, that mode to our staff that says 'hey look, my peer has been successful at this,'" Coburn said.
That might be an easy sell to doctors in an academic or research setting, but a primary care doctor who sees 30 patients a day, a surgeon who's in the operating room all day, and a busy nurse need a bit more care and help.
It's about teaching them to think of themselves and act like an innovator, to try and come up with new and better ways of doing their job, then to use the organization that Coburn's created to make something from it.
Turning ideas into companies and products
Coburn's team, in addition to encouraging innovation, does everything it takes to get from an idea to reality, finding investors, dealing with patent law, and so on. "That's not stuff that comes naturally to a doc," as Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove puts it.
Coburn and his team have done it so well that hospitals around the country are paying the Clinic to run commercialization systems for them. ?
The idea is to make it possible for every employee to be an entrepreneur and It's not just doctors. Coburn and his team have had a lot of success with dashboards and other software too, so it's about the tech people, nurses and support staff as well. He thinks that many of the early advances and payoffs from these programs will come from the IT side, especially as electronic medical records become the standard worldwide.
The year before MedStar, the largest hospital system in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, brought the Cleveland Clinic on board to help build their system, they had no disclosures of possible ideas from their staff. The year after, they had more than 100.
The Cleveland Clinic isn't the only hospital tech transfer program out there, places like Massachusetts General and Sloan Kettering have been very successful as well. However, export their model is something new that could bring a large number of new players to the table.?
Hospitals aren't going to replace big pharma, biotech companies, or tech startups. However, there's a huge amount of human capital and potential that has yet to be fully unleashed.?
Check War Room over the next few days for more on how the next wave of health care advances and startups could come from hospitals.
NOW READ: Big Changes Are Coming For The US Health Care System?
Welcome back and Happy New Year! I hope that you make this your best year to date! In today?s life coaching article, I am going to go into self-belief and the importance this plays in achievement. I will also list 5 steps to help you identify the perception you may have of your self-belief, so you can become more aware of what your may be saying to thinking to yourself. To start, let me define self-belief in this way. Self-belief is the choice to be willing to always have faith in yourself ? regardless of the circumstances.
The significance of Self-Belief
Why is self-belief so important? Well, I believe that our self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth and our self-belief all work together to help shape our lives. I think it?s very difficult to have high self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth and a low sense of self-belief. I don?t think any of these terms can be in the negative and the other be in the positive. It?s like an incline graph. As self-esteem grows, so do the others. As self-confidence grows, so do the others. The same is true for self-belief. We can?t have a low sense of self-esteem or confidence and a high sense of belief in ourselves. So to positively shape our lives, it is absolutely imperative that we understand this. We must act as if we have so much belief in ourselves, that we could not fail. Of course this doesn?t guarantee success, but I don?t know of many people that have had major successes in life that did not believe they could achieve what they wanted.
5 Steps to Identify and Increase Your Self-Belief
1. Rate your usual level of self-belief from 1 to 10, with 10 being the strongest.
2. What one thing, more than any other, adds to your belief in yourself?
3. What one thing, more than any other, takes away from your belief in yourself?
4. How important do you think your level of self-belief is to your overall success and well-being? Why?
5. Name two or three things you could do more of to increase your belief in yourself.
Are there times in your life when you had to do something significant and your level of self-belief was at a 10? What results did you get? How did that feel? In contrast, keeping with the same idea, your level of self-belief was say 5 or less, even zero. What results did you get? How did that feel? I think it makes sense that when we are in a state of higher self-belief, we give ourselves a better chance to get a result.
Final Thoughts
The level of self-belief we have will most certainly play a part in the achievement of our personal endeavors. It may be difficult for us to have a higher level of self-belief at times. To help with that, practice the concept of self-belief by writing down any situation where you felt that your self-belief was low, and any situation where your self-belief felt especially high. Examine them and honestly try to understand where your belief stemmed from. Can that belief be different and what can you do to improve that for the future?
Sure the headline of this post is just common sense, but I feel like we all need a reminder this holiday season, especially as all the salacious photo evidence from the past couple of nights is just hitting Facebook. For those of you that have been busy drunkenly accumulating that evidence and not reading tech news over the holidays, a couple of things happened this past week that make this reminder especially pressing. In an amazing confluence of events over the break, Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi posted a photo of her famous family trying out the Poke app to her "Friends" on Facebook. Then she tagged her sister Arielle in it.
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Public release date: 8-Jan-2013
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Sure the headline of this post is just common sense, but I feel like we all need a reminder this holiday season, especially as all the salacious photo evidence from the past couple of nights is just hitting Facebook. For those of you that have been busy drunkenly accumulating that evidence and not reading tech news over the holidays, a couple of things happened this past week that make this reminder especially pressing. In an amazing confluence of events over the break, Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi