The fact that the debate over whether a college degree is a sound investment even exists says volumes about the state of higher education in America today. But not only is the debate real, well-known figures are getting in on the discussion. It would be one thing if musicians or baseball players were making noise about how they skipped college and turned out fine, but it?s another thing to hear millionaire businessmen say college is not a must. These 10 past and present CEOs, founders, and all-around corporate stars bear witness that you might be better off leap-frogging campus for the real world.
Peter Thiel:
The uncontested leader of the anti-college movement is PayPal co-founder and former CEO Peter Thiel. Himself a billionaire thanks to his entrepreneurial spirit and sound investments in companies like Facebook, Thiel believes college stifles entrepreneurship or gets in the way of business opportunities. He sees the high number of successful CEOs without college degrees as proof that a degree is not necessary. To prove his point, he launched the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, which pays the 20 brightest students under the age of 20 he can find to drop out of school and do their own research and create their own businesses.
Mark Cuban: MORE:? http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/10-famous-ceos-who-think-you-should-skip-college/
WINKLER, MANITOBA--(Marketwire - 5 juillet 2012) - La secr?taire parlementaire du ministre de la S?curit? publique et d?put?e de Portage-Lisgar, Candice Hoeppner, au nom de la ministre des Ressources humaines et du D?veloppement des comp?tences, l'honorable Diane Finley, annoncera l'octroi d'une contribution du gouvernement du Canada ? Segue Career Options pour venir en aide aux jeunes de la r?gion de Winkler.
Mme Hoeppner sera disponible pour une s?ance de photos et pourra r?pondre aux questions des m?dias apr?s l'annonce.
Veuillez noter que tous les d?tails sont sujets ? des modifications et qu'il s'agit de l'heure locale.
... 2 ER, BB, 2 K (3.6 ERA) Don?t need to state the obvious about his name. GCL Yankees: W 8-3 vs GCL Phillies. W: Niebla (2-0) Peter O?Brien: 2/4, 2B (.571) Should ...
GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world's media near Geneva on Wednesday.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."
Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN's Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle.
It is unclear that it is exactly the boson Higgs foresaw, which by bestowing mass on other matter helps explain the way the universe was ordered after the chaos of Big Bang.
But addressing scientists assembled in the CERN auditorium, Heuer posed them a question: "As a layman, I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?" A roar of applause said they did.
For some, there was no doubt the Higgs boson is found: "It's the Higgs," said Jim Al-Khalili of Surrey University, a British physicist and popular broadcaster. "The announcement from CERN is even more definitive and clear-cut than most of us expected.
"Nobel prizes all round."
Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who in the early 1960s proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass. Higgs himself argued that if there were an invisible field responsible for the process, it must be made up of particles.
He and some of the others were at CERN to welcome news of what, to the embarrassment of many scientists, some commentators have labelled the "God particle", for its role in turning the Big Bang into an ordered universe. Clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, Higgs told the symposium of fellow researchers: "It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime."
Scientists see confirmation of his theory as accelerating investigations into the still unexplained "dark matter" they believe pervades the universe and into the possibility of a fourth or more dimensions, or of parallel universes. It may help in resolving contradictions between their model of how the world works at the subatomic level and Einstein's theory of gravity.
END OF AN ERA
"It is very satisfying," Higgs told Reuters. "For me personally it's just the confirmation of something I did 48 years ago," he said of the achievement of the thousands who labored on the practical experimental work which had, finally, confirmed what he and others had described with mathematics.
"I had no expectation that I would still be alive when it happened," he said of the speed with which they found evidence.
"For physics, in one way, it is the end of an era in that it completes the Standard Model," he said of the basic theory physicists currently use to describe what they understand so far of a cosmos built from 12 fundamental particles and four forces.
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around the 27-km (17-mile) looped pipe built under the Swiss-French border before smashing into each other.
The collisions, which mimic the moments just after the Big Bang, throw off debris signals picked up by a vast complex of detectors and the data is examined by banks of computers.
The two separate CERN teams worked independently through that data, hunting for tiny divergences which might betray the existence of the new boson, a class of particle that includes the photon, associated with light. The class is named in honor of Albert Einstein's Indian collaborator Satyendra Nath Bose.
Both teams found strong signals of the new particle at around 125 to 126 gigaelectron volts (GeV) - a unit of mass-energy. That makes it some 130-140 times heavier than a proton.
Scientists struggling to explain the theory have likened Higgs particles to a throng of paparazzi photographers; the greater the "celebrity" of a passing particle, the more the Higgs bosons get in its way and slow it down, imparting it mass; but a particle such as a photon of light is of no interest to the paparazzi and passes through easily - a photon has no mass.
Presenting the results, Joe Incandela at CERN showed off two peaks on a graph of debris hitting the detectors, which he said revealed the hitherto unseen presence of the enigmatic particle. "That is what we are sure is the Higgs," a CERN scientist said.
LESS THAN ONE IN A MILLION
"It's a boson!" headlined Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council in a statement on the role its researchers had played in the delivery of the "dramatic 5 sigma signal" for the existence of the long-sought particle.
Five sigma, a measure of probability reflecting a less than one in a million chance of a fluke in the data, is a widely accepted standard for scientists to agree the particle exists.
"The fact that both our teams have independently come to the same results is very powerful," Oliver Buchmueller, a senior physicist on one of the research teams, told Reuters.
"We know it is a new boson. But we still have to prove definitively that it is the one that Higgs predicted."
"If I were a betting man, I would bet that it is the Higgs. But we can't say that definitely yet. It is very much a smoking duck that walks and quacks like the Higgs. But we now have to open it up and look inside before we can say that it is indeed the Higgs."
Al-Khalili said the researchers' caution was extreme: "Cutting through all the jargon about sigmas and decay channels, the bottom line is that CERN have indeed discovered the Higgs boson," he said. "In my view, if it looks like the Higgs, smells like the Higgs and is exactly what we expected from the Higgs, then it's the Higgs."
UNIVERSAL THEORY
The Higgs theory explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and life itself. Without the Higgs boson, the universe would have remained a formless soup of particles shooting around at the speed of light, the theory goes.
It is the last undiscovered piece of the Standard Model that describes the fundamental make-up of the universe. The model is for physicists what the theory of evolution is for biologists.
What scientists do not yet know from the latest findings is whether the particle they have discovered is the Higgs boson as exactly described by the Standard Model. It could be a variant of the Higgs idea or an entirely new subatomic particle that could force a rethink on the fundamental structure of matter.
The last two possibilities are, in scientific terms, even more exciting.
Packed audiences of particle physicists, journalists, students and even politicians filled conference rooms in Geneva, London and a major physics conference in Melbourne, Australia, to hear the announcement.
Despite the excitement, physicists cautioned that there was still much to learn: "We have closed one chapter and opened another," said Peter Knight of Britain's Institute of Physics.
Paul Nurse, president of Britain's science academy The Royal Society, said: "This is a big day for science and for human achievement ... Today moves us a step closer to a fuller understanding of the very stuff of which the universe is made."
Higgs himself called it a great achievement for CERN's collider. Without it, his ideas would remain just a paper theory and he conceded that he personally was never cut out for laboratory experimentation: "I certainly did some lab work as a schoolboy in Bristol," he told Reuters. "I was incompetent."
(Additional reporting by Rosalba O'Brien in London and Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
New animal model may lead to treatments for common liver diseasePublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Carey jcarey@txbiomed.org 210-258-9437 Texas Biomedical Research Institute
Scientists at Texas Biomed have developed the laboratory opossum as a new animal model to study the most common liver disease in the nation afflicting up to 15 million Americans and for which there is no cure.
The condition, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), resembles alcoholic liver disease, but occurs in people who drink little or no alcohol. The major feature of NASH is accumulation of fat in the liver, along with inflammation and functional damage. Most people with NASH feel well and are not aware that they have a liver problem. Nevertheless, NASH can progress to cirrhosis, in which the liver is permanently damaged and no longer able to work properly. NASH-related cirrhosis is the fourth most common indication for liver transplantation in the U.S.
NASH affects 2 to 5 percent of Americans roughly six million to 15 million people. An additional 15 to 30 percent of Americans have excess fat in their livers, but no inflammation or liver damage, a condition called "fatty liver" or the non-progressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
The study, published in the July issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology, was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr., and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation.
"This is the type of model in which to develop mechanism-based therapies," writes Geoffrey C Farrell, M.D., of the Australian National University Medical School in Canberra, in a journal editorial.
Both NASH and NAFLD are becoming more common, possibly because of the greater number of Americans with obesity and its important health complications, type 2 diabetes, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart attack and stroke. In the past 10 years, the prevalence of obesity has doubled in adults and tripled in children. It was previously reported by other scientists that the prevalence of NAFLD and NASH in a cohort of middle-aged patients in San Antonio is 46 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
"It now seems likely that genetic factors, such as those important for diabetes and high cholesterol levels, are what determines why a small proportion of those with fatty liver develop NASH and its complications of cirrhosis and liver cancer," said Farrell.
In the new study, high responding opossums developed elevated cholesterol and fatty liver disease when fed a high cholesterol and high fat diet, whereas low responding opossums did not. High responders carry a mutated ABCB4 gene, which affects their ability to secrete excess cholesterol from the liver into bile which, in turn, transports the cholesterol to the intestines for excretion from the body. As a consequence, opossums with the mutated gene accumulate cholesterol in the liver and ultimately in the blood.
"We showed that the fatty livers of high responders contain a tremendous amount of cholesterol," said first author Jeannie Chan, Ph.D., of Texas Biomed. "The opossum is a new animal model for investigating the mechanism by which cholesterol mediates liver injury, which will lead to a better understanding of the role of dietary cholesterol in the development of NASH."
###
Co-authors on the study included Rampratap S. Kushwaha, Ph.D., Jane F. VandeBerg, and John L. VandeBerg, Ph.D., all of Texas Biomed; and Francis E. Sharkey, M.D., of the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.
Texas Biomed, formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Located on a 200-acre campus on the northwest side of San Antonio, Texas, the Institute partners with hundreds of researchers and institutions around the world, targeting advances in the fight against AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, parasitic infections and a host of other infectious diseases, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, psychiatric disorders, and problems of pregnancy.
For more information on Texas Biomed, go to www.TxBiomed.org, or call Joe Carey, Texas Biomed's Vice President for Public Affairs, at 210-258-9437.
[ | 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.
New animal model may lead to treatments for common liver diseasePublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Carey jcarey@txbiomed.org 210-258-9437 Texas Biomedical Research Institute
Scientists at Texas Biomed have developed the laboratory opossum as a new animal model to study the most common liver disease in the nation afflicting up to 15 million Americans and for which there is no cure.
The condition, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), resembles alcoholic liver disease, but occurs in people who drink little or no alcohol. The major feature of NASH is accumulation of fat in the liver, along with inflammation and functional damage. Most people with NASH feel well and are not aware that they have a liver problem. Nevertheless, NASH can progress to cirrhosis, in which the liver is permanently damaged and no longer able to work properly. NASH-related cirrhosis is the fourth most common indication for liver transplantation in the U.S.
NASH affects 2 to 5 percent of Americans roughly six million to 15 million people. An additional 15 to 30 percent of Americans have excess fat in their livers, but no inflammation or liver damage, a condition called "fatty liver" or the non-progressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
The study, published in the July issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology, was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr., and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation.
"This is the type of model in which to develop mechanism-based therapies," writes Geoffrey C Farrell, M.D., of the Australian National University Medical School in Canberra, in a journal editorial.
Both NASH and NAFLD are becoming more common, possibly because of the greater number of Americans with obesity and its important health complications, type 2 diabetes, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart attack and stroke. In the past 10 years, the prevalence of obesity has doubled in adults and tripled in children. It was previously reported by other scientists that the prevalence of NAFLD and NASH in a cohort of middle-aged patients in San Antonio is 46 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
"It now seems likely that genetic factors, such as those important for diabetes and high cholesterol levels, are what determines why a small proportion of those with fatty liver develop NASH and its complications of cirrhosis and liver cancer," said Farrell.
In the new study, high responding opossums developed elevated cholesterol and fatty liver disease when fed a high cholesterol and high fat diet, whereas low responding opossums did not. High responders carry a mutated ABCB4 gene, which affects their ability to secrete excess cholesterol from the liver into bile which, in turn, transports the cholesterol to the intestines for excretion from the body. As a consequence, opossums with the mutated gene accumulate cholesterol in the liver and ultimately in the blood.
"We showed that the fatty livers of high responders contain a tremendous amount of cholesterol," said first author Jeannie Chan, Ph.D., of Texas Biomed. "The opossum is a new animal model for investigating the mechanism by which cholesterol mediates liver injury, which will lead to a better understanding of the role of dietary cholesterol in the development of NASH."
###
Co-authors on the study included Rampratap S. Kushwaha, Ph.D., Jane F. VandeBerg, and John L. VandeBerg, Ph.D., all of Texas Biomed; and Francis E. Sharkey, M.D., of the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.
Texas Biomed, formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Located on a 200-acre campus on the northwest side of San Antonio, Texas, the Institute partners with hundreds of researchers and institutions around the world, targeting advances in the fight against AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, parasitic infections and a host of other infectious diseases, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, psychiatric disorders, and problems of pregnancy.
For more information on Texas Biomed, go to www.TxBiomed.org, or call Joe Carey, Texas Biomed's Vice President for Public Affairs, at 210-258-9437.
[ | 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.
You may have noticed some new bylines popping up these past couple of days. You're not hallucinating! We've quietly made several new additions to the TechCrunch roster this summer and hiring continues to be our first priority across all departments. In addition to specialist writers like Alex Williams and Greg Ferenstein, we've added a couple of interns and a rockstar product manager to our team. We're also busy with other parts of the company, adding more people to our events team, and working on important but unglamorous projects like getting the site to load faster (hallelujah). Here?s the latest on the newest folks we've got working here, and why you might want to talk to each of them.
Road-mapping the Asian brainPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emma Thorne emma.thorne@nottingham.ac.uk 44-115-951-5793 University of Nottingham
Scientists at The University of Nottingham are leading research that will develop the world's first 'atlas' of the Asian brain.
Working in collaboration with colleagues in South Korea, the project aims to build a detailed picture of how the Asian brain develops normally, taking into account the differences and variations which occur from person to person.
The resulting road-map of the brain could be used to help doctors in countries like South Korea, Japan and China to develop new diagnostic tools for age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia, allowing them to spot illnesses at a much earlier stage, thereby improving treatment options and outcomes.
The two-year project will marry the expertise of Nottingham academics in advanced brain imaging techniques, including ultra high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with the clinical expertise and specialist computer software development skills of researchers at Korea University in Seoul.
Stephen Jackson, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the University's School of Psychology, said: "Developing this atlas of the Asian brain will be a major step forward in furthering the field of neuroscience, which is developing rapidly in the East.
"We hope this two-year project will also act as a template for further UK-South Korean collaboration and knowledge transfer, which has been highlighted by Government as a strategic priority."
The project, initially funded with a Global Partnership Fund grant from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (BIS), will see the Nottingham academics working with colleagues in the College of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, and Psychology at Korea University, to scan the brains of healthy Asian adults using advanced MRI techniques.
Data from the hundreds of images produced will then be analysed and computer modelling techniques used to build up a detailed picture of how a normal Asian brain develops in adults, taking into account the slight variations that occur from person to person.
There are subtle differences in the size and genetics of the Asian brain compared to its Western cousin and the research will allow for the development of new diagnostic aids for age-related neuro-degenerative diseases which are specifically tailored to Asian patients.
The research will build on The University of Nottingham's reputation as a world-leader in MRI research the technique was invented there by Professor Sir Peter Mansfield, whose work jointly earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003.
Biomedical imaging remains a strategic research priority for Nottingham through its Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre, which hosts the UK's only 7 Tesla MRI scanner.
The University has recently established a UK Centre for Child Neuroimaging, a core theme of Nottingham's Impact Campaign, the biggest fundraising campaign in The University of Nottingham's 130 year history. It aims to raise 150m to transform research, enrich the student experience and enable the institution to make an even greater contribution to the global communities it serves.
The work to map the Asian brain will also involve collaboration with academics at other UK and European institutions, including University College London, the Institute of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry, Imperial College and the University of Aachen in Germany.
The collaboration between The University of Nottingham and Korea University is the latest in a long-running relationship between the two higher education institutions and follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, along with 12 other universities in the Universitas 21 group, in 2009 that aimed to offer postdoc students international opportunities through a joint PhD programme.
###
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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.
Road-mapping the Asian brainPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emma Thorne emma.thorne@nottingham.ac.uk 44-115-951-5793 University of Nottingham
Scientists at The University of Nottingham are leading research that will develop the world's first 'atlas' of the Asian brain.
Working in collaboration with colleagues in South Korea, the project aims to build a detailed picture of how the Asian brain develops normally, taking into account the differences and variations which occur from person to person.
The resulting road-map of the brain could be used to help doctors in countries like South Korea, Japan and China to develop new diagnostic tools for age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia, allowing them to spot illnesses at a much earlier stage, thereby improving treatment options and outcomes.
The two-year project will marry the expertise of Nottingham academics in advanced brain imaging techniques, including ultra high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with the clinical expertise and specialist computer software development skills of researchers at Korea University in Seoul.
Stephen Jackson, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the University's School of Psychology, said: "Developing this atlas of the Asian brain will be a major step forward in furthering the field of neuroscience, which is developing rapidly in the East.
"We hope this two-year project will also act as a template for further UK-South Korean collaboration and knowledge transfer, which has been highlighted by Government as a strategic priority."
The project, initially funded with a Global Partnership Fund grant from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (BIS), will see the Nottingham academics working with colleagues in the College of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, and Psychology at Korea University, to scan the brains of healthy Asian adults using advanced MRI techniques.
Data from the hundreds of images produced will then be analysed and computer modelling techniques used to build up a detailed picture of how a normal Asian brain develops in adults, taking into account the slight variations that occur from person to person.
There are subtle differences in the size and genetics of the Asian brain compared to its Western cousin and the research will allow for the development of new diagnostic aids for age-related neuro-degenerative diseases which are specifically tailored to Asian patients.
The research will build on The University of Nottingham's reputation as a world-leader in MRI research the technique was invented there by Professor Sir Peter Mansfield, whose work jointly earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003.
Biomedical imaging remains a strategic research priority for Nottingham through its Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre, which hosts the UK's only 7 Tesla MRI scanner.
The University has recently established a UK Centre for Child Neuroimaging, a core theme of Nottingham's Impact Campaign, the biggest fundraising campaign in The University of Nottingham's 130 year history. It aims to raise 150m to transform research, enrich the student experience and enable the institution to make an even greater contribution to the global communities it serves.
The work to map the Asian brain will also involve collaboration with academics at other UK and European institutions, including University College London, the Institute of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry, Imperial College and the University of Aachen in Germany.
The collaboration between The University of Nottingham and Korea University is the latest in a long-running relationship between the two higher education institutions and follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, along with 12 other universities in the Universitas 21 group, in 2009 that aimed to offer postdoc students international opportunities through a joint PhD programme.
###
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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.
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Public release date: 3-Jul-2012
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You may have noticed some new bylines popping up these past couple of days. You're not hallucinating! We've quietly made several new additions to the TechCrunch roster this summer and hiring continues to be our first priority across all departments. In addition to specialist writers like Alex Williams and Greg Ferenstein, we've added a couple of interns and a rockstar product manager to our team. We're also busy with other parts of the company, adding more people to our events team, and working on important but unglamorous projects like getting the site to load faster (hallelujah). Here?s the latest on the newest folks we've got working here, and why you might want to talk to each of them.