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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/48119148#48119148
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Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
India's Monsoon Season Is Starting To Look Like A Disaster
India's monsoon is 30 percent behind average and analysts are getting worried.
Jefferies' Arya Sen warns that a sub-par monsoon could add to growth and inflation concenrs:
With FY13 GDP growth forecasts for India already at 5-6.5% for most on the street, a poor monsoon and its direct and indirect impacts could pose further risk to GDP growth. In the last decade, in the poor monsoon years of FY03 (-19%), FY05 (-14%) and FY10 (-22%), agricultural GDP growth has been -6.6%, 0.2% and 1.0% respectively against median growth of 3.5%. In FY12 agriculture contributed 14% to India's overall real GDP. The indirect impact could take various forms such as weaker rural demand and lower hydroelectric power production. A poor monsoon could also further drive up India's already high food and overall inflation with implications for RBI's decision making. Food items account for 24% in the WPI basket.
At least India's grain reserves may be high enough to avoid a food crisis, Sen says.
India has already been described as the weakest BRIC.
The monsoon?aka the real finance minister of India?lasts from mid-May to late-October, and it can recover from a bad June, but it is unlikely to recover from a bad July, Sen says. Better watch those weather maps.
Don't Miss: Why Everyone Is Freaking Out About India >
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Monday, July 9, 2012
AT&T lights up several new cities with LTE data
AT&T this morning announced an expansion of its fledgling 4G LTE network. New cities to receive the faster data (as opposed to that "other" 4G data, the slower HSPA+) include:
- Wichita, Kan.
- Gainesville, Fla.
- Greensboro, N.C.
- Winston-Salem, N.C.
- Corpus Christi, Texas
- Burlington, N.C.
- Buffalo, N.Y.
Charlotte, N.C., and Cleveland are seeing expanded LTE coverage as of today. AT&T's 4G LTE data is available on a number of Android smartphones, including the new Samsung Galaxy S III and the HTC One X, among others.
Source: AT&T
 |  |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/pk68Zso5lUo/story01.htm
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Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Video: Crude Oil: The Slide in 'Black Gold'
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Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Insight: As banks deepen commodity deals, Volcker test likely
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The subtext of JPMorgan's landmark deal to buy crude and sell gasoline for the largest oil refinery on the U.S. East Coast was barely disguised.
In joining private equity firm Carlyle Group to help rescue Sunoco Inc's Philadelphia plant from likely closure, the Wall Street titan cast its multibillion-dollar physical commodity business as an essential client service, financing inventory and trading on behalf of the new owners.
This was about helping conclude a deal that would preserve jobs and avert a potential fuel price spike during the heat of an election year summer -- not another risky trading venture after the more than $2 billion 'London Whale' loss.
But the deal also highlights a largely overlooked clause in the Volcker rule that threatens to squeeze banks out of physical markets if applied strictly by regulators, one that JPMorgan and rivals like Morgan Stanley have been quietly fighting for months.
While it has long been known the Volcker rule will ban banks' proprietary trading in securities, futures, and other financial tools like swaps, a draft rule released in October cast a net over commercial physical contracts known as ?commodity forwards', which had previously been all but exempt from financial oversight.
The banks say that physical commodity forwards are a world away from the exotic derivatives blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis. A forward contract in commodities exists somewhere in the gray area between a derivative like a swap - which involves the exchange of money but not any physical assets - and the spot market, where short-term cash deals are cut.
Banks say they are also essential to conclude the kind of deal that JPMorgan lauded on Monday.
"JPMorgan's comprehensive solution, which leverages our physical commodities capabilities... demonstrates how financial institutions with physical capabilities can prudently, yet more effectively, meet our clients' capital needs," the bank said in a press release.
But regulators say they are keen to avoid leaving a loophole in their brand new rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, that could allow banks to shift high-stakes trades from financial to physical markets.
"We intended the Volcker Rule to prohibit a broad swath of risky bets, including bets on the prices of commodities," said Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who helped draft the part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that mandates the proprietary trading ban.
"The proposed Volcker Rule should cover commodity forwards because those instruments often constitute a bet on the future prices of commodities."
In the latest example of a refining company outsourcing its trading operations to Wall Street, JPMorgan will not only provide working capital for the joint venture between Carlyle Group and Sunoco Inc, but will also operate a 'supply and offtake' agreement that has the bank's traders shipping crude oil from around the world to the plant, then marketing the gasoline and diesel it makes.
If the rule is finalized as it stands the question will turn on whether banks can convince regulators that their physical deals are only done on behalf of clients, making them eligible for an exemption from the crackdown.
BANKS GET PHYSICAL
Over the last decade Wall Street banks quietly grew from financial commodity traders into major players in the physical market of crude oil cargoes, copper stockpiles and natural gas wells, often owning and operating vast assets too.
Bankers argue that forward contracts are necessary if they are to help refineries like Philadelphia curb costs and free up capital, to help power plants to hedge prices, or to let metals producers and grain farmers finance storage.
Forwards are essentially contracts to buy or sell a certain amount of a physical commodity at an agreed price in the future. Their duration can range from a few days to a number of years.
"To pull forwards into the Volcker rule just because someone has a fear that they could, in some instances, be used to evade the swap rules is just ridiculous," one Wall Street commodities executive said.
"We move oil all over the world. We have barrels in storage. They are real, not just things on paper. They go on ships and they go to refineries. It is basically equating forwards with intent for physical delivery as swaps - and they're not."
She added: "You can't burn a swap in a power plant."
Unlike a swap, which will be settled between counterparties on the basis of an underlying financial price, a forward will usually turn into a real asset after time. Unlike hard assets, however, the forward contract can be bought or sold months or years before the commodity is produced or stored.
Historically the physical commodity markets have remained beyond financial regulatory supervision and forwards are not mentioned specifically in the part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that mandates the drafting of the Volcker rule.
But the drafters of Dodd-Frank say it was always their aim to prevent banks that receive government backstops like deposit insurance from trading for their own gain. They worry that banks could quickly boost trading for their own book in forward markets rather than purely for the benefit of clients.
"The issue is the potential for evasion," said one official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) who was not authorized to speak on the matter. He said traders could easily buy and sell the same commodity forward contract, profiting on the price difference, without the goods ever changing hands.
It would be a useful tool "if you want to hide activities or evade margin requirements," he added.
RISKY BET OR HARMLESS HEDGE?
Kurt Barrow, vice president at IHS Purvin & Gertz in Houston and lead author of a Morgan Stanley-commissioned report on the impact of the Volcker rule on banks' commodity businesses said deals like JPMorgan's with Carlyle and Sunoco could be in jeopardy.
"One of the problems with Volcker is the way it is written assumes that every trade the banks make is in violation of it, and then they have to go through a series of steps to prove that it's not," Barrow said.
"If the banks have physical obligations they need to hedge, like in supply and off-take agreements with refineries, there are already concerns that they could be seen to be in violation of the Volcker rule. The rules are geared toward equity trading and don't take account of how commodity markets really work."
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which alongside JPMorgan dominate physical commodity trading on Wall Street, also take part in supply and offtake agreements with independent refiners.
Without leeway to trade forward contracts, banks would have little reason to retain the metal warehouses, power plants, pipelines, and oil storage tanks that are the crown jewels of their commodity empires.
The future of those assets is already in question as the Federal Reserve must soon decide if banks backstopped by the government will be allowed to retain those assets indefinitely.
In the years preceding the financial crisis, major banks were at times booking as much as a fifth of their total profits from their commodity trading expertise, but drew criticism they could combine their physical market knowledge with huge balance sheets to try and push prices in their favor.
That criticism has resurfaced this year.
"Americans are already paying heavily at the pump for excessive speculation in the oil markets," Senator Jeff Merkley, who co-authored the Volcker provision with Senator Levin, told Reuters.
"The last thing they need is more of that speculation and risk-taking, especially when it would not only drive gas prices even higher but could also contribute to another 2008-style meltdown."
NO FORWARDS, NO PHYSICAL, NO SERVICE
The inclusion of forwards in the proposed Volcker rule has created concern beyond Wall Street. Some industry groups argue banks have become so embedded in the structure of both financial and physical commodity markets that they are now key trading partners for a wide range of firms.
"We were surprised," said Russell Wasson at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRESCA). "To us they are straightforward business contracts because they're associated with physical delivery. They're being treated as derivatives when they never have been before."
The concerns are the same as with other aspects of the Dodd-Frank reforms, the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression: tough new limits will reduce liquidity, thereby increasing market volatility and hedging costs.
The Volcker rule does include key exemptions to allow banks to hedge risk and make markets for clients.
But some commodities experts say proving that forwards fit into these categories may be too onerous to be helpful.
University of Houston professor Craig Pirrong, an expert in finance and energy markets who has generally argued against the proposed regulation, said he was skeptical of the hedging exemption's utility, and was sure regulators would take a tough line in the wake of JPMorgan's recent losses.
"They will have to provide justification that these (commodity forwards) are hedges or entered into as part of their "flow" business with customers," he said.
"In the post-Whale world, banks are on the defensive and I would not bet on them prevailing on an issue like this."
Banking executives say they are now desperate to convince skeptical regulators that their physical arms have been transformed into purely market making and client facing businesses.
"Banks have been working to reposition their commodities business... under the assumption that physical markets would be covered by Volcker," one senior Wall Street commodities executive said.
"Several banks shut down their proprietary trading about two years ago in anticipation of this. The argument that physical commodity markets will present some kind of Volcker loophole for banks is false."
(Reporting By David Sheppard; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)
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Engadget HD Podcast 306 - 07.03.2012
After Google I/O, the latest news from Mountain View is tops on our list as we try to wrap our heads around the Nexus Q. Also on the list this week are the odd couple pairings of Boxee and Comcast, as well as HBO and Hulu (in Japan.) Meanwhile Dish Network and AMC have severed ties, we'll see if the relationship can be repaired before Breaking Bad season five begins. We've also got updates on Windows 8 Media Center, Verizon's new CableCARD policy, and changes for the NFL -- press play for the full run down.
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[MP3] Download the show (MP3).
Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh (@bjdraw), Richard Lawler (@rjcc)
Producer: Trent Wolbe
00:10:17 - Cracking the Nexus Q, Google's 25-watt amplified obsession
00:22:07 - Google Play starts selling movies, TV shows (single episode or full season) and magazines today
00:29:20 - Don't worry, you're not the only one: Netflix is currently down, admins hard at work
00:36:32 - HBO Go update supports Android tablets up to ICS
00:36:48 - Hulu Japan lands HBO content, but don't expect any changes in the US
00:37:56 - Boxee, Comcast agree to a workaround for encrypted basic cable channels on third party boxes
00:43:45 - Verizon FiOS TV finally set to enforce CableCARD restrictions
00:47:50 - Marquee Media Center hands-on
00:50:00 - Vizio XVT CinemaWide TV goes on sale, 21:9 movie purists celebrate the end of black bars
00:52:05 - Control4 delivers home automation Starter Kit for under $1,000 including installation, we go hands-on
00:58:42 - Marvel's The Avengers Blu-ray hits September 25th, iOS second screen app this month
01:01:15 - Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures Blu-ray set hits shelves September 18th
01:01:35 - AMC dropped from Dish Network, cuts a new deal to stay on with AT&T U-verse
01:09:00 - Next season NFL will release All-22 game tape, relax blackout rules and start later
01:11:25 - Must See HDTV (July 2nd - 8th)
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Engadget HD Podcast 306 - 07.03.2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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SDSC's CIPRES Science Gateway clarifies branches in evolution's 'tree of life'
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 3-Jul-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Jan Zverina
jzverina@sdsc.edu
858-534-5111
University of California - San Diego
XSEDE resource provides open-access phylogenetic supercomputing
A new Web resource developed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego is helping thousands of researchers worldwide unravel the enigmas of phylogenetics, the study of evolutionary relationships among virtually every species on the planet.
The CIPRES Science Gateway (CIPRES stands for Cyber Infrastructure for Phylogenetic RESearch), created by SDSC researchers, allows these studies to proceed in significantly shorter times without having to understand how to operate complex computers. Scientists anywhere in the world upload their data via a Web browser free of charge under a grant provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
CIPRES is part of the NSF's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). It is part of the XSEDE Science Gateway initiative, designed to provide scientists with broad and easy access to supercomputers.
Researchers say the gateway, and access to powerful supercomputers, are helping to answer increasingly sophisticated phylogenetic questions.
"The CIPRES Science Gateway makes it possible for researchers to make use of all this new information more quickly and effectively," said Mark Miller, principal investigator of the CIPRES Gateway. "Our team is excited to have supported more than 300 publications of phylogenetic studies involving species in every branch of the Tree of Life."
"It's an important additional step in the conduct of science," said Peter Nelson, a graduate student in the Department of Botany & Plant Pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "This is a new opportunity for people who don't yet have grant money, but who want to do meaningful research and you don't have to leave your computer."
Nelson, a theorist in botany, is trying to understand the evolutionary processes that may operate one way in genetically homogeneous communities, but in a different way in more genetically diverse communities. He studies the divergence of tree species in North America. "We use GenBank and other sequence databases to gather the data, and free software is available to edit the sequences," he said. "But the process is so computationally intensive I could never have accomplished it on a personal computer."
Shedding new light on origins
All life forms, from simple bacteria to primates and plants, descended from a single common ancestor. A diagram of all the evolutionary relationships looks like a highly branched tree with the common ancestor at the base of the trunk, and extinct and living groups forming the branches. All living species are represented by leaves at the tips of the outermost limbs. This Tree of Life, like evolution itself, is not static; rather the branching process continues today as groups of individuals in single species, such as the Eastern Meadowlark appear to be splitting into two because of long-term geographical or environmental factors.
The phylogenetic history of each living species is contained in its DNA, and SDSC's CIPRES Gateway is helping scientists analyze all the evolutionary relationships by making it possible for them to compare similarities and differences in the DNA among large numbers of species.
Phylogenetics is essential to understanding not only the history of life on earth, but also how populations of flowering plants, insects, crustaceans, fish, fungi, insects and microorganisms slowly change in response to their surroundings.
Such studies can also shed new light on how and where lineages began after challenging long-accepted theories. Researchers, for example, are using the CIPRES Gateway to clarify the evolution of wild grapes, which University of Florida Botany Professor J. Richard Abbott wrote, "indicate that American lineages could be older than Asian." Abbott and his co-authors reported the controversial finding in a report in the February 2012 issue of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
In another project, Andrew F. Hugall and Devi Stuart-Fox, zoology researchers in the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, used the CIPRES Gateway to provide the first phylogenetic analysis supporting an evolutionary theory that new species of birds are generated faster when the ancestral species exhibits color variations in its feathers.
Hugall and Stuart-Fox reported in the May 9, 2012, issue of Nature that speciation rates were almost three times higher for so-called color polymorphic species of birds of prey than similar monomorphic bird species. As the prevalence of feather-color polymorphism falls, so too does the rate of speciation.
The discipline of phylogenetic systematics combines taxonomy, or the description and naming of living species as well as fossilized life forms found in natural history museums, with modern phylogenetic studies. Systematic biologists combine a variety of sources of information, analyses and hypotheses to organize related groups of species, such as vertebrates, into clades and clades within clades. For example, the vertebrate clade is further subdivided into clades of amphibians, primates, rodents, and other groups of related species.
"Studies by systematic and evolutionary biologists have historically been limited by the number of available DNA sequences in public databases like GenBank," said Miller. However, he added that modern DNA sequencing technologies generate data so quickly that analyzing all relevant data on conventional laptops can take weeks.
"There is a huge need in the community for easy access to computing resources," said Miller. To meet that enthusiastic demand, Miller's team at SDSC and their collaborators around the country continue to combine emerging techniques in computational biology with computer science.
###
[ | 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.
Public release date: 3-Jul-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Jan Zverina
jzverina@sdsc.edu
858-534-5111
University of California - San Diego
XSEDE resource provides open-access phylogenetic supercomputing
A new Web resource developed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego is helping thousands of researchers worldwide unravel the enigmas of phylogenetics, the study of evolutionary relationships among virtually every species on the planet.
The CIPRES Science Gateway (CIPRES stands for Cyber Infrastructure for Phylogenetic RESearch), created by SDSC researchers, allows these studies to proceed in significantly shorter times without having to understand how to operate complex computers. Scientists anywhere in the world upload their data via a Web browser free of charge under a grant provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
CIPRES is part of the NSF's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). It is part of the XSEDE Science Gateway initiative, designed to provide scientists with broad and easy access to supercomputers.
Researchers say the gateway, and access to powerful supercomputers, are helping to answer increasingly sophisticated phylogenetic questions.
"The CIPRES Science Gateway makes it possible for researchers to make use of all this new information more quickly and effectively," said Mark Miller, principal investigator of the CIPRES Gateway. "Our team is excited to have supported more than 300 publications of phylogenetic studies involving species in every branch of the Tree of Life."
"It's an important additional step in the conduct of science," said Peter Nelson, a graduate student in the Department of Botany & Plant Pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "This is a new opportunity for people who don't yet have grant money, but who want to do meaningful research and you don't have to leave your computer."
Nelson, a theorist in botany, is trying to understand the evolutionary processes that may operate one way in genetically homogeneous communities, but in a different way in more genetically diverse communities. He studies the divergence of tree species in North America. "We use GenBank and other sequence databases to gather the data, and free software is available to edit the sequences," he said. "But the process is so computationally intensive I could never have accomplished it on a personal computer."
Shedding new light on origins
All life forms, from simple bacteria to primates and plants, descended from a single common ancestor. A diagram of all the evolutionary relationships looks like a highly branched tree with the common ancestor at the base of the trunk, and extinct and living groups forming the branches. All living species are represented by leaves at the tips of the outermost limbs. This Tree of Life, like evolution itself, is not static; rather the branching process continues today as groups of individuals in single species, such as the Eastern Meadowlark appear to be splitting into two because of long-term geographical or environmental factors.
The phylogenetic history of each living species is contained in its DNA, and SDSC's CIPRES Gateway is helping scientists analyze all the evolutionary relationships by making it possible for them to compare similarities and differences in the DNA among large numbers of species.
Phylogenetics is essential to understanding not only the history of life on earth, but also how populations of flowering plants, insects, crustaceans, fish, fungi, insects and microorganisms slowly change in response to their surroundings.
Such studies can also shed new light on how and where lineages began after challenging long-accepted theories. Researchers, for example, are using the CIPRES Gateway to clarify the evolution of wild grapes, which University of Florida Botany Professor J. Richard Abbott wrote, "indicate that American lineages could be older than Asian." Abbott and his co-authors reported the controversial finding in a report in the February 2012 issue of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
In another project, Andrew F. Hugall and Devi Stuart-Fox, zoology researchers in the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, used the CIPRES Gateway to provide the first phylogenetic analysis supporting an evolutionary theory that new species of birds are generated faster when the ancestral species exhibits color variations in its feathers.
Hugall and Stuart-Fox reported in the May 9, 2012, issue of Nature that speciation rates were almost three times higher for so-called color polymorphic species of birds of prey than similar monomorphic bird species. As the prevalence of feather-color polymorphism falls, so too does the rate of speciation.
The discipline of phylogenetic systematics combines taxonomy, or the description and naming of living species as well as fossilized life forms found in natural history museums, with modern phylogenetic studies. Systematic biologists combine a variety of sources of information, analyses and hypotheses to organize related groups of species, such as vertebrates, into clades and clades within clades. For example, the vertebrate clade is further subdivided into clades of amphibians, primates, rodents, and other groups of related species.
"Studies by systematic and evolutionary biologists have historically been limited by the number of available DNA sequences in public databases like GenBank," said Miller. However, he added that modern DNA sequencing technologies generate data so quickly that analyzing all relevant data on conventional laptops can take weeks.
"There is a huge need in the community for easy access to computing resources," said Miller. To meet that enthusiastic demand, Miller's team at SDSC and their collaborators around the country continue to combine emerging techniques in computational biology with computer science.
###
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/uoc--scs070312.php
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