'Temptation of the Muses' at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall postponed

Nai-Ni Chen Dance and the Ahn Trio?s ?Temptation of the Muses,? which was featured in Thursday?s Preview section, has been postponed.

Originally slated for Dec. 7 at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the show is now scheduled for Feb. 16, according to the Music Hall?s website.

The program teams Nai-Ni Chen Dancewith the Ahn Trio for a work that channels the sense of connection and communion that the holidays bring. Chen, a native of Taiwan, describes ?Temptation of the Muses? as ?an Impressionist painting,? merging dance and live music, structure and improvisation, themes of nature and of urban industry. Inspired by Persian poet Latif Nazemi?s poem ?A Word for Freedom,? the piece is set to composer Kenji Bunch?s ?Concrete Stream,? and also includes music by Pat Metheny and David Balakrishnan of the Turtle Island Quartet.

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 13
Where: Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, 30 2nd St., Troy
Tickets: $15, $25, $34
Info: 273-0038 or http://www.troymusichall.org

Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts/temptation-of-the-muses-at-troy-savings-bank-music-hall-postponed/25544/

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Drained wetlands give off same amount of greenhouse gases as industry

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2012) ? Drained wetlands in Sweden account for the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as Swedish industry. This is shown by a summary of research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Forests and agricultural fields on drained previous wetlands make up between five and ten percent of Sweden's surface area. When these wetlands are drained, they become a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.

"We note that drained wetlands which have been forested or used for agricultural purposes are a significant potential source of greenhouse gases of a magnitude that is at least comparable with the industrial sector's greenhouse gas emissions in Sweden."

Emissions from these drained wetlands can be reduced, but that involves rewetting the land -- resulting in a negative impact on forestry production. According to the researchers, compromises may be necessary.

"As long as wetlands remain wet, only methane is given off," says ?sa Kasimir Klemedtsson from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Gothenburg. "However, for more than a hundred years land has been drained for agriculture and forestry, producing large quantities both carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide."

Together with researcher ?rjan Berglund from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Dr Kasimir Klemedtsson was commissioned by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency during the summer and autumn of 2012 to compile information about greenhouse gases from drained wetlands.

New rules were introduced at last year's Durban Climate Change Conference with the second Kyoto Protocol phase. These rules include the possibility of reporting wetland drainage or rewetting of drained wetlands. Sweden now faces the choice of whether to include these ahead of the second Kyoto Protocol phase.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/4mh71SixfEk/121123092742.htm

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Dell Q3 FY 2013 Results Point to a Need for Better Management of ...

We sat through a webcast of Q3 FY 2013 conference call for Dell (http://www NULL.dell NULL.com). Our rationale for spending the time required to attend this earnings presentation was simple. We are investors in Dell. As well, we are largely focused on realities and potential trends in IT computing for enterprise businesses and comparably sized organizations in the public and/or private sectors. Regardless of Dell?s present condition, the company is, nevertheless, a major factor in our area of focus, and, therefore, worth our attention.

It is hard for us to believe, but nevertheless true (per this report), that Dell embarked on its effort to transform itself into an ?end to end? solution for enterprise markets four years ago. Brian T. Gladden, SVP and CIO makes mention of this fact at the start of this webcast presentation of the Q3 results. Gladden also notes that this ?end to end? product produced approximately $4.8 Billion in earnings for the quarter, which, by any standard, is a considerable amount of money. But the composite growth rate, at a mere 3%, in our opinion, is much more indicative of a stable, mature business, than a growth vehicle. Further, the fact that the leading group of products in this complex set of solutions (in terms of revenue generation), namely hardware servers and network equipment, are simply the foundation for Dell?s growing set of offers at the application layer (principally Quest Software) says to us that enterprise IT spending on software is largely at a standstill, at least for Dell.

Mr. Gladden noted that total company revenue was down 11% year over year, but still within the range management forecasted in August, 2012 (albeit at the low end of that range). Gross margin, at 22% declined 60 basis points, from Q2 fy 2013. We think that some of this decline in gross margin can be attributed to what we have written about elsewhere in this blog, namely, the phenomenon whereby IT software is trending, from the customer, demand, perspective, to mere commodity. Profitability was shored up by careful management of operational expenses (OPEX). Nevertheless, earnings per share amounted to a 28% reduction below Q2 fy 2013.

Sales of network hardware grew by 40%, which is impressive. Mr. Gladden noted that Dell launched its ?Active Infrastructure Converged Offering? in this quarter. This offer includes hardware, software and services components ? . . . under a common design architecture . . .? (quoted from Dell?s webcast, which can be accessed from the Dell website, for which a link has been provided above). He characterized the market forces driving this offering as a need for ?simpler? solutions.

Per Mr. Gladden, the drop of 3% in sales of storage solution resulted in revenue that fell below management?s expectations. Nevertheless, he characterized this drop as more the result of weaker market demand than any competitive factors.

Our conclusion from this section of the Dell webcast is that enterprise IT spending on data center, on premise solutions is on hold, at least for the class of solutions offered by this vendor. Further, and with specific reference to Dell, itself, we think that the fact that hardware components ? namely servers and network devices ? remain key revenue drivers, despite 4 years of transition, indicates some management difficulty with regards to truly transforming this business.

? IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2012 All Rights Reserved

Source: http://www.imbenterprises.com/sales/dell-q3-fy-2013-results-point-to-a-need-for-better-management-of-its-business-transformation/

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Violin bow maker keeps his craft alive

7 hrs.

Matt Rivera

In a small, sun-drenched studio outside of Boston, Benoit Rolland runs his hand over thin, dark planks of wood. He taps them to demonstrate how the percussive sound of each species varies. The pitch is higher in one plank, the reverb more durable in another.

By his count, Rolland is one of only a handful of people in the world who makes custom bows for violins, violas and cellos. It?s a traditional kind of work ? another Frenchman, Fran?ois-Xavier Tourte, settled the form of the bow in the 18th century, and most bows today are based on this design.

Though Rolland?s name might not?be widely known, his bows are played on instruments with recognizable names like Stradivarius and Guarneri. Rolland has been making custom bows since the early '70s, and today he can produce as many as 30 in a year, selling them for up to $15,000 apiece.

In almost any other field, a machine would have replaced his job, but his clientele are the professional musicians who travel the world performing at the top of their field.

Befitting such an expensive piece of equipment, Rolland?s process for designing a bow is very specific. It begins with a private audience.? If a customer lives abroad, he asks for them to send an audio recording.

?After a small while, I?m able to guess the bowings,"?Rolland said. "And then the fingerings. And the fingerings are very important, because they are linked to the bowings. And the bowings are linked to the fingerings.??

"It's a circle,"?Rolland explains. "When I can get into that circle, I have a fair idea of who I?m working for.?

After listening to the performer, Rolland chooses a specific wood and works up a design that accommodates their strengths and weaknesses. He prefers to use a species of Brazilian wood called pernambuco,? celebrated for its tone, strength and longevity.

Unfortunately, pernambuco is an endangered species, and it?s impossible to buy more of the rare timber.

Rolland has a stockpile of the wood that he hopes will last the rest of his life, but anticipating the eventual disappearance of pernambuco, he began experimenting with alternative materials. In the 80s, he was one of the first people to create a bow from carbon fiber.

Unlike the warm sound of a wooden bow, Rolland says, ?Carbon fiber conveys a very fast vibration. It?s not an advantage. We have to damp the vibration a little bit to give more warmth through the sound.?

His innovations have won him recognition. In October, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a ?Genius Award,? for the improvements he has made to the enduring wooden stick.

One of his recent changes to bow design was to slightly alter the angle at which the bow hair sits on an instrument, yielding greater sound and improved control.

?I do not plan nor intend to change the sound of the violin, otherwise it wouldn?t be a violin anymore," he says. "But, you know, violin playing is very difficult.?

When asked what he has in store, he demurs. ?I have several inventions that are cooking,"?he says with a grin. "I don?t say that because I?m French. ?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/modern-world-violin-bow-maker-keeps-his-craft-alive-1C7206756

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Improving 3-D image capture in real time

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2012) ? Researchers at the UPNA-Public University of Navarre develop a technique to improve the capture in real time of three-dimensional images. The work, published in a leading scientific journal on Computation and Artificial Intelligence, has applications in aeronautics, the automotive sector and operating rooms.

A team of researchers of the Public University of Navarre has developed a technique that enables the processing in real time of 3-D images to be improved. The work, which has applications for 3-D video, aeronautics, the automotive sector or intelligent systems for operating theatres, for example, has been published in the American journal "IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence," a leading publication in terms of its impact in the field of Computational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence.

This research comes within the framework of the PhD thesis that Leonardo de Maeztu-Reinares, a Telecommunications Engineer, has developed at the Public University of Navarre. Co-authors of the paper are Rafael Cabeza-Laguna and Arantxa Villanueva-Larre, lecturers in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics.

The work is based on stereoscopic vision, a technique for obtaining 3-D images. "The basic principle of stereoscopy is the use of two or more cameras that simultaneously pick up the same scene from different positions, similar to what human eyes do," say the authors. That way, two or more images are captured for each instant in time and are compared with each other to work out how far the objects are from the cameras, and that way capture the depth lacking in a classical photograph, which is two-dimensional."

According to the authors, this comparison of two stereoscopic images requires "a considerable computational load and great algorithmic complexity," if accurate results are to be produced. In actual fact, the work published proposes that three modifications be made to the algorithms (understood as operations or instructions) that allow a technique to be reused; this used to be known as the so-called anisotropic diffusion in order to compare pairs of stereoscopic images.

"The algorithm proposed," says Leornardo de Maeztu, "yields better results than other previous ones in the same class and, what is more, presents a very interesting competitive advantage: it can be implemented in real time using a standard graphics card. Although they are algorithms that require a great calculating capacity, if the whole potential of current graphics processors is used, it is possible to execute in real time, in other words, to process as many images per second as those caught by the corresponding camera."

Applications of stereoscopic vision

This research into stereoscopic vision has applications in fields like 3-D video recording, the monitoring of the environment in vehicles (unmanned planes and helicopters, vehicles, etc.) or intelligent systems for operating theatres.

According to the classification of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) which appraises world scientific journals, the publication "IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence," which includes the article by the researchers at the Public University of Navarre, leads the world ranking within the ones devoted to Computational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence in terms of its impact factor. It is published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), a worldwide professional organisation with its headquarters in the United States and which brings together nearly 400,000 professionals in the new technologies.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/9fuBwTh9pZg/121123103707.htm

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Black Friday Store Opening Times: Target, Walmart, Best Buy And More

Here is a roundup of store hours at some of the biggest Black Friday retailers. Keep in mind, times may vary depending on location. It's always best to confirm hours at your local store before heading out.

• Best Buy: 12 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Bloomingdales: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Costco: 7 a.m on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• J.C. Penney: 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Kmart: 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving day and 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Kohl's: 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Macy's: 12 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Michael's: 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving (Store Locator)
• Office Depot: 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Old Navy: 12 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Radioshack: 6 a.m. (Store Locator)
• Sears: 8 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 9:00 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Target: 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 11 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)
• Toys R Us: 8 p.m. on Black Friday to 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving (Store Locator)
• Walgreens: Open 24 hours on Thanksgiving and Black Friday in some locations (Store Locator)
• Walmart: 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 10 p.m. on Black Friday (Store Locator)

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/black-friday-store-opening-times_n_2170885.html

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Intel acquires ZiiLabs from Creative Technology for $50 million

Intel has signed a $50 million deal with Creative Technology to acquire ZiiLabs, a UK-based subsidiary responsible for Android-optimized chip designs like the ZMS-40 and the ZMS-20. Of that $50 million, $30m will be for asset sales and engineering resources while the remainder will be for patent licensing in regards to Ziilabs GPU technology, which might indicate a move away from PowerVR. We're not sure if this means Creative will soldier on with OEM-focused devices like the HanZPad, but at least now it'll have more money in the bank to explore alternative endeavors.

Filed under: Misc, Intel

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Source: The Inquirer, CNET Asia

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/intel-acquires-ziilabs/

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