Men Initiating Change Is An Important Step Toward Eradicating Tech’s Bro Culture

#GNN #Editor’s note: Telle Whitney is the President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute and co-founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Connecting, inspiring, and guiding women technologists is her passion.

The conversation about women in tech is shifting as technology companies begin to hold themselves accountable. Recent moves, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo releasing their employee diversity numbers, show an intensified commitment to making real change for women technologists, but the sentiment is not industry-wide.

We often hear from tech leadership that they would like to hire more women in technical roles, but they continue to reference the lack of women in the STEM pipeline as the cause. Deferring accountability will not affect real systematic change.

We are saddled with a chicken and egg stalemate. The fact is, the tech brogrammer culture that startups are known for is a major reason for women being put off from working in the industry.

On HBO’s “Silicon Valley” – a show that often hits too close to home to be considered satire – one of the running jokes is the app Nip Alert, one character’s creation that helps locate women with large breasts. This app, of course, is based on real-life incidents in the tech industry, which crop up every day, and then are all too often swept under the rug.

When it becomes commonplace for technical conferences to include a twinge of sexism or to uncover a startup founder’s misogynistic behavior, it is a red flag that the startup fraternity culture is out of control. The tech industry’s “boys will be boys” mentality in the face of these recent events is taking a toll on diversity in the STEM pipeline.

In the face of all the negative stories coming out of the tech industry, it is no wonder that young women are not flocking to be the next target. Intelligent young women are generally uninterested in joining a frat house environment that stereotypes them in negative ways and demeans them regularly. A perceived lack of opportunities to flourish in a tech career may be keeping young women out of the computer science and engineering pipeline.

There is a way to enact a cultural change, and it starts with the men in tech. Women will continue to be vocal and push for change, but it is just as important for men to step in and speak up. This includes men at all levels of the technical workforce, leadership and especially at venture capital firms.

The tech brogrammer culture that startups are known for is a major reason for women being put off from working in the industry.

As it stands, many of the recent controversies in tech were met with silence and inaction from VC firms. When Julie Ann Horvath spoke up about the harassment she faced at GitHub, the only response from the company’s VC firm was a lonely tweet from Marc Andreessen supporting the founder who resigned.

There was no apology to Horvath and no indication of support for improving the work environment for women. Similarly, when the CEO of RadiumOne, Gurbaksh Chahal, was convicted of two misdemeanors for domestic violence and battery against his girlfriend, the drawn-out inaction of RadiumOne’s board of directors only resulted in his firing when the media firestorm became too much.

Even when laws aren’t being broken, the absence of women has failed to register as an issue for VCs, such as the lack of women on Twitter’s board just before their IPO in 2013. Silence in the face of incidents like these, especially from those who hold the purse strings, sends a terrible message to women technologists and young women considering careers in the field.

A culture that glorifies the boy genius founder and encourages a frat house environment in spite of all the warning signs is not a place where most intelligent young women feel they can succeed, leading them to pursue other careers.

At the Anita Borg Institute we regularly see men in leadership positions stepping forward to take part in the conversation. Over the past 20 years of hosting the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, we often feature many of our committed board members, including Alan Eustace from Google, Mike Schroepfer from Facebook, Justin Ratner from Intel, and Rick Rashid from Microsoft. This year we have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as one of our keynotes. These men understand that changing tech’s culture is not just a women’s issue, it is an innovation issue.

Now is not the time for complacency. There are many actions men in the technology industry can take to show their support. The most important action is to speak up in opposition to inequality and inaction and to speak out in support of women technologists, especially when you see actions or messages that are inappropriate or condescending. Individual male support for women in tech will lead to a greater grassroots effect that will bring about a more accepting and innovative tech culture where all parties can thrive.

IMAGE BY Shutterstock USER DVARG (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

GM ignition switch fund gets 63 death case claims

#GNN - The lawyer overseeing a General #Motors Co (GM.N) fund set up to compensate victims of accidents caused by faulty ignition switches in its cars said he received claims for cases involving 63 deaths.

Kenneth Feinberg, who is overseeing the fund, also told Reuters that since the fund was set up a week ago 65 others had filed physical injury claims as of Friday afternoon. However, he added that the death claims had not yet been confirmed as being eligible for compensation.

Feinberg, who started taking claims from Aug. 1 and will continue until Dec. 31, will determine the number of claims eligible for payments and final payouts.

GM earlier this year recalled 2.6 million cars for the faulty ignition switches, which can cause engine stalls and stop power steering and power brakes from operating and air bags from deploying. It has also admitted not fixing the problem for a decade.

The number of death claims represents nearly five times the 13 deaths that GM has attributed to the defective switches.

The Detroit-based automaker has set aside $400 million to cover victims' claims, but the amount could grow because the fund is not capped.

Lawyers for various plaintiffs have said several dozen deaths may ultimately be attributed to the switches.

The payouts from the compensation fund for eligible claims are expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2015, Feinberg said in June, adding that the families for those who died would likely be awarded at least $1 million.

Feinberg has previously handled a compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a BP Plc (BP.L) fund for victims of the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Reporting by Avik Das in Bangalore and Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr and Ken Wills)

China's consumer inflation at 2.3 percent in July as forecast

#GNN - #China's consumer inflation came in as forecast at 2.3 percent rise, data showed, reinforcing bets that benign price pressures will give authorities room to relax monetary policy if needed.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday also pointed to stubborn deflationary pressures among producers and manufacturers.

The producer price index fell 0.9 percent for the 29th consecutive month, in line with forecasts for a 0.9 percent decline.


Analysts polled by Reuters had expected consumer inflation to be steady at 2.3 percent in July, unchanged from June.

On a monthly basis, consumer inflation ran at 0.1 percent in July, as forecast.

China's economy has had a rocky year as growth faltered on unsteady foreign and domestic demand.

An initial brightening in the economic outlook in the past month as factory activity picked up was quickly eclipsed by surprisingly weak growth in imports and the services sector, raising questions about whether authorities need to do more to lift activity.

(GNN)(Reuters)(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing and Pete Sweeney)

U.S. productivity bounce-back keeps wage pressures tame

#GNN - #Productivity at U.S. nonfarm #businesses rebounded strongly in the second quarter, putting a lid on wage pressures and giving the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low for a while.

The Labor Department said on Friday productivity increased at a 2.5 percent annual rate after contracting at a revised 4.5 percent pace in the first quarter. The first quarter's drop was the sharpest since the fourth quarter of 1981.

The bounce back kept labor-related production costs in check. They had surged at the start of the year as an unusually cold winter depressed output.

Unit labor costs, the price of labor for any given unit of production, rose at a 0.6 percent rate, braking sharply from an upwardly revised 11.8 percent pace in the first quarter.

"The key message here is that labor costs remain subdued and unlikely to represent a source of rising production costs and or inflationary pressures any time soon," said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York.

The Fed is keeping a close eye on wage growth as it ponders when to raise benchmark interest rates, which it has kept near zero since December 2008. Investors do not expect a rate increase until around the middle of next year.

With productivity stepping up, there is more room for workers to win wage hikes without pressuring inflation or profits. Compared to the second quarter of last year, unit labor costs were up just 1.9 percent, below the central bank's 2 percent inflation target.

Even so, pay is accelerating.

The report showed compensation per hour increased at a 3.1 percent rate in the second quarter, and was up by the same amount from a year earlier. In comparison, hourly compensation advanced only 1.1 percent last year.

COMPENSATION RISING
Other gauges, such as the government's measure of personal income and its employment cost index, a broad gauge that is one of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's favorites, have also pointed to some firming of wage pressures.

"Today's report doesn't say that labor costs are a problem yet, but it hints at some improvement in pay," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. "Fed members, at least the inflation hawks, will likely look at the report as supporting their view that it is time to change direction."

It is unlikely that productivity will continue to advance at the second quarter's pace. Over the past three years, it has never topped 1 percent on an annual basis.

"Unless productivity growth shows signs of accelerating in the near future, labor costs could begin to put some pressure on profit margins," said Alan MacEachin, an economist at Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Virginia.

The second-quarter rebound reflected a sharp step up in gross domestic product in the second quarter. The government said last week that the economy grew at a 4.0 percent rate after shrinking at a 2.1 percent pace in the first quarter.

The second-quarter growth estimate, however, is likely to be trimmed when the figures are revised later this month, with a report on Friday from the Commerce Department showing only a moderate gain in wholesale inventories in May and June.

Economists said slow wholesale restocking could lower the second-quarter GDP estimate by as much as three-tenths of a percentage point, although data earlier this week showing a smaller trade gap should help offset that a bit.

(GNN)(Reuters)(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Tim Ahmann)

Israel strikes Gaza after militants resume rocket fire

#GNN - Israel launched air #strikes across the #Gaza Strip on Friday in response to Palestinian rockets after Egyptian-mediated talks failed to extend a 72-hour truce in a month-old war.

Egypt later called for a resumption of the ceasefire, saying only a few points remained to be agreed. Palestinian factions said they would meet Egyptian mediators later in the day but there was no sign of any imminent deal.

An Israeli government official said Israel would not negotiate with Palestinians while militants continued to unleash missiles.

As warning sirens sounded in southern Israel, the military said "Gaza terrorists" had fired at least 57 rockets on Friday and the "Iron Dome" interceptor system had been used against some of them.

Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the salvoes from the Hamas-dominated enclave.

Accusing Hamas of breaking the ceasefire, Israel said several of the rockets had been launched about four hours before the truce was due to end at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT). Heavier barrages followed shortly after the ceasefire period expired.

By resuming the attacks, Gaza militants appeared to be trying to put pressure on Israel, making clear they were ready to fight on to end a blockade of the coastal territory that both Israel and neighbouring Egypt have imposed.

In the first casualties since hostilities resumed on Friday, Palestinian medical officials said a 10-year-old boy was killed in an Israeli strike near a mosque in Gaza City. An Islamic Jihad militant and three other Palestinians were killed in attacks from the air in the southern Gaza Strip.

In Israel, police said two people were injured by mortar fire from Gaza.

Israel's armed forces said they had responded to the cross-border attacks by targeting 51 "terror sites" across the Gaza Strip, including rocket launchers and military compounds and headquarters, and would continue to strike Hamas and its infrastructure and operatives.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, said on Channel 2 television that Gaza militants "have to get hit in return, and not in the same proportion, but to a greater degree".

Heavy civilian casualties and destruction during Israel's campaign against militants in packed residential areas of the Gaza Strip have raised international alarm over the past month, but efforts to prolong a ceasefire at talks in Cairo failed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he was deeply disappointed an extension of the ceasefire could not be agreed, and he condemned the renewed rocket fire on Israel.

"The Secretary-General firmly calls on the parties not to resort to further military action that can only exacerbate the already appalling humanitarian situation in Gaza," it said.

GO-BETWEENS
Israel had earlier said it was ready to agree to an extension as Egyptian go-betweens pursued negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian delegates.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Israel had rejected most Palestinian demands. "However, we did not close the door and will continue with the negotiations," he said.

His comments came in response to a statement from the Egyptian foreign ministry, which indirectly blamed the Palestinians for refusing to end the truce. Egypt said an agreement had been reached on the major issues of concern to the Palestinian people and only a few sticking points remained.

The Palestinians had wanted Israel to agree in principle to demands which include lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the release of prisoners and the opening of a sea port, but this had been rebuffed, Abu Zuhri said.

Israel has shown little interest in easing its naval blockade of Gaza and controls on overland traffic and airspace, suspecting Hamas could restock with weapons from abroad.

Livni said the issue of a sea port should be part of wider final-status peace negotiations with the Palestinians and that Hamas, in the current indirect talks mediated by Egypt, should not be rewarded for "using force against Israeli citizens."

In Cairo, the foreign ministry called on both sides "to return immediately to the ceasefire and exploit the opportunity available to resume negotiations on the very limited sticking points that remain in the fastest possible time".

In Gaza, some families who had returned to their homes in the northern town of Beit Hanoun during the ceasefire gathered their belongings and headed back to the United Nations shelters where they had sought refuge over the past few weeks.

Beit Hanoun resident Yamen Mahmoud, a 35-year-old father of four, said: "Today I am fleeing again. I am not against resistance but we need to know what to do. Is it war or peace?"

Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,880 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Hamas said on Thursday it had executed an unspecified number of Palestinians as Israeli spies.

Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have died in the fighting that began on July 8, after a surge in Palestinian rocket salvoes into Israel.

It expanded its air and naval bombardment of the Gaza Strip into a ground offensive on July 17, and pulled its infantry and armour out of the enclave on Tuesday after saying it had destroyed more than 30 infiltration tunnels dug by militants.

Hamas's refusal to extend the ceasefire could further alienate Egypt, whose government has been hostile to the group and which ultimately controls Gaza's main gateway to the world, the Rafah border crossing.

A source at Cairo airport said the Israeli delegation left shortly before the truce expired.

"Despite being in Cairo for a week to negotiate, we have not heard Israel’s view on this demand or that demand, we’ve only heard it through the media. I say this is wrong," senior Fatah leader Azzam al-Ahmed, who heads the Palestinian negotiating team, told reporters in a hotel in the Egyptian capital.

"We present demands that have to do with stopping the war. We hope these demands are met. It would pave the way for a political process that would end the violence and the war and end the bloodshed," he said.

In the occupied West Bank on Friday, a 20-year-old Palestinian was shot dead during an anti-Israeli protest outside the settlement of Psagot, the Palestinian ambulance service said. A military spokeswoman said troops first used riot control methods but then opened fire, "confirming a hit", after stone-throwing protesters reached the settlement's fence.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin and Maggie Fick in Cairo, Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Pfizer confronts surge of lawsuits over Lipitor

#GNN - Pharmaceutical giant #Pfizer is facing a mounting wave of lawsuits by women who allege that the company knew about possible serious side effects of its blockbuster anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor but never properly warned the public.

In the past five months, a Reuters review of federal court filings shows, lawsuits by U.S. women who say that taking Lipitor gave them type-2 diabetes have shot up from 56 to almost 1,000.

Lawsuits began to be filed not long after the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 warned that Lipitor and other statins had been linked to incidents of memory loss and a "small increased risk" of diabetes. According to plaintiffs' lawyers, women face a higher risk than men of developing diabetes from using Lipitor, and gain fewer benefits.

The recent spike in lawsuits followed a decision by a federal judicial panel to consolidate all Lipitor diabetes lawsuits from around the country into a single Federal courtroom in Charleston, South Carolina. Pfizer opposed the consolidation, arguing it would prompt copycat filings. The first case is scheduled to be tried next July.

Pfizer said in a statement that it denied liability and would fight the lawsuits.

It is not uncommon for a drugmaker to get hit with thousands of lawsuits over its products after the FDA orders a label change alerting users to newly found risks. Takeda Pharmaceutical, for instance, is facing more than 3,500 federal lawsuits since 2011 when the FDA ordered it to update the label on its diabetes drug Actos to warn about bladder cancer. Takeda has denied liability.

But several factors set the Lipitor diabetes cases apart from those against other drug companies. For one, Lipitor is the best-selling prescription drug of all time, racking up global sales of more than $130 billion since it went on the market in 1996. More than 29 million patients in the United States have been prescribed the drug, suggesting there is a vast pool of potential plaintiffs.

On the other hand, potentially complicating matters for plaintiffs, the FDA emphasized the benefits of statins even as it warned of the risks.

When the labeling change was released in 2012, a top FDA official underscored that the agency still stood behind the drugs: "Clearly, we think that the heart benefit of statins outweighs this small increased risk (for diabetes)," Amy Egan, a deputy director for safety at the agency's Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology, said in a statement at the time.

Statins are a class of drugs that block the liver's production of cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart disease. Type 2 diabetes, once known as adult-onset or noninsulin-dependent diabetes, is a chronic condition that affects the way the body metabolizes glucose.

RISKS AND BENEFITS
The seemingly mixed message from the FDA suggests that litigation will focus on two questions: how big a diabetes risk do women using Lipitor face, and whether that risk is mitigated by the drug's cardiovascular benefits.

H. Blair Hahn of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the lead lawyer appointed to represent Lipitor plaintiffs in federal court, said the plaintiffs contracted diabetes as a consequence of taking Lipitor, and that women with diabetes see the length and quality of their lives reduced.

"We will ask a jury to decide what it's worth to take five years of someone's life," Hahn said. He said the nearly 1,000 cases filed so far represent 4,000 women, and that the number of cases could ultimately reach 10,000 or more.

Pfizer said it believes Lipitor did not cause the plaintiffs' diabetes. Women who are prescribed Lipitor to control cholesterol may share other risk factors that make them vulnerable to the disease, such as high blood pressure or obesity, the company said.

The Pfizer statement said there is an "overwhelming consensus" in the medical community about statins' benefits.

BELLWETHER TRIALS
The first Lipitor trial, scheduled for next July before U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, will be one of several so-called "bellwethers" used to gauge the strength of other cases. If Pfizer prevails, it could persuade plaintiffs to accept smaller settlements or drop cases.

Pfizer could also opt to settle before a single case is tried to avoid possible negative exposure or to prevent potentially damaging information from coming to light.

If past settlements are any guide, Pfizer's potential exposure could be substantial. Bayer, the maker of one-time rival statin Baycol, paid $1 billion in 2005 to settle about 3,000 cases alleging the drug caused rhabdomyolysis, a disease that breaks down muscle tissue. Baycol was pulled from the market in 2001 after being linked to 31 deaths.

In 2011 AstraZeneca said it would pay $647 million to resolve most of the 28,000 lawsuits it faced alleging its antipsychotic Seroquel caused diabetes and other injuries.

Pfizer has not indicated that it has set aside any money specifically to cover potential future Lipitor judgments, according to its most recent quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Michael Green, an expert in mass torts at the Wake Forest University School of Law, said he did not expect Pfizer to settle at this stage, especially given the major obstacle plaintiffs still face.

"(They) have to show they were actually harmed by this agent," he said. "That might be hard."

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Reporting by Jessica Dye in New York; Editing by Ted Botha, Eric Effron and Amy Stevens and John Pickering)

#WHO declares Ebola epidemic an international #health #emergency

#GNN - West #Africa's #Ebola epidemic is an "extraordinary event" and now constitutes an international health risk, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

 The Geneva-based U.N. health agency said the possible consequences of a further international spread of the outbreak, which has killed almost 1,000 people in four West African countries, were "particularly serious" in view of the virulence of the virus.

"A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola," the WHO said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola.

The declaration of an international emergency will have the effect of raising the level of vigilance on the virus.

"The outbreak is moving faster than we can control it," the WHO's director-general Margaret Chan told reporters on a telephone briefing from the WHO's Geneva headquarters.

"The declaration ... will galvanize the attention of leaders of all countries at the top level. It cannot be done by the ministries of health alone."

The agency said that, while all states with Ebola transmission - so far Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone - should declare a national emergency, there should be no general ban on international travel or trade.

"THIS CAN BE STOPPED"
Ebola has no proven cures and there is no vaccine to prevent infection, so treatment focuses on alleviating symptoms such as fever, vomiting and diarrhea - all of which can contribute to severe dehydration.

Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's head of health security, stressed that, with the right measures to deal with infected people, the spread of Ebola - which is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids - could be stopped.

"This is not a mysterious disease. This is an infectious disease that can be contained," he told reporters. "It is not a virus that is spread through the air."

Fukuda said it was important that anyone known to have Ebola should be immediately isolated and treated and kept in isolation for 30 days. "Based on scientific studies, people who have infection can shed virus for up to 30 days," he said.

The current outbreak, in which at least 1,711 people have so far been infected, of whom 932 have died, is the most severe in the almost 40 years since Ebola was identified in humans.

The WHO said this was partly because of the weakness of the health systems in the countries currently affected, which lacked human, financial and material resources.

It also said inexperience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks and misperceptions of the disease, including how it is transmitted, "continue to be a major challenge in some communities".

"If we do not in global solidarity come together to help these countries, they will be set back for many years," Chan said. She noted the three hardest-hit nations had only begun to emerge and rebuild after "years of conflict and difficulties".

Although most cases of Ebola are in the remote area where Guinea borders Sierra Leone and Liberia, alarm over the spread of the disease increased last month when a U.S. citizen died in Nigeria after traveling there by plane from Liberia.

After an experimental drug was administered to two U.S. charity workers who were infected in Liberia, Ebola specialists urged the WHO to offer such drugs to Africans. The U.N. agency has asked medical ethics experts to explore this option next week. [ID:nL6N0QB5UH]

David Heymann, a former WHO official and now director of the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security, who this week urged the WHO to show greater leadership and to consider allowing the use of experimental drugs for Africans affected by Ebola, said governments should step up their response.

The major message, he said, was that the three known measures that stop Ebola outbreaks – hospital infection control, community understanding of risks of infection, and contact tracing - "appear not to have been robustly enough applied".

"Governments appear to not have been engaged as necessary," he said in an emailed response to the WHO's statement.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Reporting by Kate Kelland, additional reporting and editing by Kevin Liffey)

U.S. judge rules against #NCAA, says athletes can be paid

#GNN - The National Collegiate Athletic Association must allow universities to offer student athletes a limited share of revenue, a U.S. judge ruled on Friday, a decision that cuts to the heart of the NCAA's mission to enforce amateurism in college sports.

More than 20 current and former athletes filed an antitrust class action against the NCAA, saying players should share in profits of college athletics, a lucrative business in which universities reap billions of dollars from football and basketball.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland, California, on Friday issued an injunction to allow students to recover some revenue generated from use of their names, images and likenesses. Wilken did not put the injunction on hold pending appeal, but said it will not take effect until the start of the next recruiting cycle.

"I think we'll look back at this five years from now as the day that college sports began to change. That's how important it is," said Roger Abrams, a sports law professor at Northeastern University.

NCAA Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy said "we disagree" with the court's ruling allowing athletes to share in revenue.

"We note that the Court's decision sets limits on compensation," Remy said, adding that "the NCAA is committed to fully supporting student-athletes."

The ruling adds to the mounting legal, political and public pressure for colleges to share the revenue athletic programs generate and give student athletes better benefits. In April, football players at Northwestern University became the first U.S. student athletes to vote on whether to unionize.

The majority of college athletes do not go on to play professionally. Critics say the NCAA's current scholarship policy short-changes athletes who risk injury and devote many hours to practice sessions, travel and competition.

On Thursday, the NCAA gave the five biggest college conferences broader authority to set their own rules on areas such as scholarships, insurance and travel for athletes' families.

The NCAA grosses roughly $770 million per year in media rights for its annual Division I men's basketball tournament, known as March Madness. Revenues are shared with member schools.

The richest conferences generate billions of dollars each year exclusively for themselves through media contracts and their own cable TV networks, primarily on the popularity of football and men's basketball.

Wilken's ruling follows a three-week bench trial earlier this summer. The lead plaintiff, Edward O'Bannon, won a national basketball championship with UCLA in 1995. He testified during trial that he usually spent about 40-45 hours per week on basketball and "maybe about 12 hours" on academics.

"I was an athlete masquerading as a student," O'Bannon said in court.

In her order on Friday, Wilken wrote that inequities in college sports could likely "be better addressed as a policy matter by reforms other than those available as a remedy for the antitrust violation found here."

However, Wilken still opted to issue an injunction. She ordered the NCAA to allow schools to hold a limited share of licensing revenue in trust for recruits, payable when they leave school or when their eligibility expires.

The NCAA is still allowed to enforce rules that ban student-athletes from endorsing commercial products, Wilken ruled.

Matthew Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University Law School, said the ruling moves college sports closer to the professional model.

"The amateur model that college sports has been is certainly on life support," he said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Edward O'Bannon et al. vs. National Collegiate Athletic Association et al., 09-3329.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax and Sarah McBride; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Gregorio)

When Payment Processing Becomes A Commodity

#GNN - #Editor’s note: Christoffer O. Hernæs is partner at Core Group, a Norwegian management consulting company. Christoffer is currently engaged by Sparebank1, one of Norway’s largest financial institutions; this analysis is based on public sources and is not connected to any client engagements.

One of the big subjects of discussion in the banking industry earlier this year was the publication of the Millennial Disruption Index, stating that millennials view banks as irrelevant and placing traditional retail banking at the highest risk of disruption compared to other B2C industries. Accenture’s Banking 2020 report confirms this and draws a parallel to the challenges the telecom industry faced 20 years ago and states that non-banks will take a third of incumbent banks revenues by 2020.

With the rise of mobile wallets, peer-to-peer payment, micro lending and various personal finance tools, the banking industry faces a new breed of competitors from the technology industry. Notable examples include eBay which has been in the payment space for a long time with PayPal, and is now strengthening its foothold in mobile payment by integrating Apples fingerprint reader into PayPal.

Google has tried entering the payment space with the discontinued Google Checkout and Google Wallet. Amazon is targeting the mobile payment space through acquisition of GoPago, as well as challenging Square with a planned launch of a similar payment processing solution. Facebook, on the other hand, is targeting the $500+ billion global remittance market.

The common denominator for the challengers is that the majority of the companies are targeting the payment processing space. Both Bank of America and Capital One say not to worry, since this is old news and it only disrupts the peripherals of the banking value chain. But the real implication as with any form of value chain disruption is the probability of payment processing becoming a commodity.

A catalyst for a commoditization of payment processing is the introduction of cryptocurrencies and new payment protocols like bitcoin and Ripple, which renders clearing obsolete and dramatically lowers the transaction cost for merchants. As a comparison, the transaction cost for payments through Visa/Mastercard/PayPal is ranging between 3-5 percent depending on the transaction size. The transaction cost for bitcoin on the other side is as low as 1 percent with continuing efforts to reduce transaction fees from the bitcoin community.

To accelerate the development Bitpay recently announced removed the transaction fees on the starter plan, offering free unlimited payment processing to merchants accepting BitCoin. With eBay considering integrating bitcoin into PayPal and Apple reentering bitcoin wallets like Blockchain into the App Store cryptocurrencies as a default payment method becomes an alluring option for profit-seeking merchants looking for cost effective solutions. This places the challengers in a sweet spot somewhere between the banking and the retail industries through digital wallets and disruptive payment platforms.

A commoditization of payment processing will require new business models where cash no longer is king, but analysis of the information gathered through transactions is the new competitive advantage in the digital payment processing space. Ovum’s report, “Loyalty and Location Based Payment Services” predicts that loyalty and analytics is the primary growth driver for mobile payments. It states that this will require new partnerships between payment providers, merchants and third-party analytics vendors like Oracle and IBM, where the latter already has entered a partnership with Monitise in order to deliver cloud-based mobile solutions for the financial services industry.

Starbucks is one example of the business potential in combining loyalty programs and payments and reports that mobile payments stands for over 15 percent of U.S. sales from the third quarter, and is considering selling its software to other merchants.

These changes to combined with increasing sector complexity due to industry convergence, capital requirement regulations, industry consolidation and diminishing ROE (Return of Equity) compared to before the financial crisis poses great challenges for banks in the years to come and creates a perfect storm seemingly favoring new entrants and the technology industry’s inherent ability to experiment and willingness to try and fail.

Despite an entrepreneurial spirit and independence from antiquated legacy systems, barriers to entry are rising. Glen Fossella states in an interview with American Banker that regulatory complexity and compliance demands will become such a growing burden for new entrants, that it is both faster and cheaper for incumbents to acquire or partner with startups. Square learned this the hard way and was fined $507,000 in Florida for operating without a license. He also advises banks to invest in startups, acquire and hire entrepreneurs or hire talent from technology companies.

The leading example when it comes to preparing for the rise of digital payments is Visa. Visa CEO Charles W. Scharf stated that the leading payment network is counting on new digital services to power future growth, although Visa presented an 11 percent rise in third-quarter earnings from global payments. One of these initiatives is the creation of Visa Digital Solutions with a wide array of offerings.

This includes the launch of Visa Checkout, the successor to V.me, Visa Cloud Payment Solutions and, more exciting, the tokenization service that substitutes traditional credit card numbers with a digital token. Visa also opens up for collaboration with developers and technology companies with these new services. In addition Visa revealed an investment in LoopPay, a mobile payments solution accepted at the majority of point-of-sale terminals.

Through these initiatives, Visa sets a leading example for incumbents in the payment ecosystem by showing a try-and-fail mentality, as well as long-term commitment through repeated mobile wallet initiatives, willingness to invest in promising startups as well as collaborating with partners to encourage open innovation. Banks and financial institutions should view Visa as a leading example in order to secure a position in the digital payment ecosystem.

And let’s face it. A bank will never be viewed as cool for the millennial generation. But banks represent safety for the consumer, and it is possible to make banking somewhat less boring through adapting new technology and acquiring new innovations.

IMAGE BY SHUTTERSTOCK USER PETR KOPKA (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

Your Lost #Android Phone Can Now Call You

#GNN - Did you know that Android has a built-in mechanism for locating or locking your lost phone? Google hasn’t done the best job marketing it, but it’s actually been baked right in since the release of Android 4.4*.

(It works with older Android phones, too — you just have to install the free app yourself)

Today that feature gets even better, thanks to the addition of a trick that seems so obviously great in hindsight: your lost phone can be set to call you — and only you — as soon as someone finds it.

If you lose your phone, just head over to Google’s browser-based Android Device Manager. Tap the lock button, toss in a “Recovery Message” (read: a plea to whoever finds the phone to not be a jerk) and an unlock password, and add a phone number where you can be reached.

Bam! Whoever finds the phone now has a way to instantly reach you with the press of a button — but since the rest of the phone is locked down behind a password of your choosing, that’s the only thing they can use your phone for.

One catch: even if you’ve got an Android phone that comes with the locator functionality out-of-the-box, you’ll need to update to the latest build for the phone-the-owner functionality to work. You can find the update in the Play Store here.

[via Phandroid]

Vine Competitor Groopie Lets #Vloggers Create #TV-Style #Shows Together

#GNN - #YouTube stars are more popular among today’s U.S. teens than Hollywood celebs, a recent study found. Hoping to capitalize on this trend, a new social video network called Groopie has just launched on iPhone, allowing the next generation of vloggers to record video shows with friends, which may include both scripted and unscripted content.

The L.A. and San Francisco-based startup was founded by Fuad Hawit, whose entrepreneurial drive was influenced by his father Andre, a longtime tech startup founder, who sold IDS Software Systems for $50 million in 2003, and later co-founded companies with his son, including gSoft, makers of an early Siri-like mobile assistant, and audio ad network Mixberry Media.

But Groopie is Fuad’s first solo effort, he says.

The idea for the app came to him in the pre-Vine days, he says, after watching reality TV and realizing the similarities between that style of programming and today’s social media. He envisioned a service that would let vloggers create video “episodes” together, which would be like independently produced reality TV shows.

An early prototype of the Groopie application allowed multiple users to record video from different locations (even flipping between front and back cameras seamlessly), then merge those videos into one. But unlike competitors who offer mobile video “stitching” apps, or apps like Vine which ask you to start and stop your video shoots in order to tell your story, Groopie works a bit differently, says Hawit.

How It Works: Not Stitching, But “Sync”

“Every other video editing tool is doing it like film-style, where they’re stitching multiple shots together,” he explains. “You have to be a director or script writer to be able to tell a story through multiple video shots…and the rest of those guys come from a desktop video ideology,” says Hawit.

Competitors are offering tools to do effects with video, or overlays, stitching tools, and more, he says.

“We kept it really simple…it’s not technically stitching. It’s real-time synchronization. You’re merging two real-time perspectives.”

That is, with Groopie, friends can shoot the episode at the same time, then merge their videos together with a built-in editing tool where you can select which camera angle and audio source you want to use for each shot in order to create one continuous video.

Despite the slight learning curve involved, the process is simple enough for Groupie to already have kids as users, as with the 2nd-grader Alex whose “The Little Alex Show” is already 21 episodes deep.The company has been running a private beta for the past 6 months, and has signed up 100 testers (Apple’s limit). These include a dozen or so YouTubers, and a couple of reality stars (from the shows “Shahs of Sunset” and “Bad Girls Club”). The current lineup of shows includes reality-style video programming as well as few more scripted shows.

Groopie users each get their own profile which lets them feature their shows, each of which can have an unlimited number of episodes. This setup lets viewers follow the individual shows they like, as opposed to a vlogger’s whole channel. Shows can be shared to Facebook and Twitter, but not published to YouTube, which is by design for this startup itching to become the “YouTube of mobile.”
 

 Hawit doesn’t really see Groopie as being disruptive to YouTube, however. But he could see it becoming more like Vine as another place for vlogger stars to grow their audiences.

These video creators already know each other, record Vines together and do shout-outs on YouTube, he says.

“They already work together…with Groopie, they can combine followers.

That’s going to be stronger than a broadcast channel,” he says. “You take users who have 1 million followers each and you put them together on a TV show – that’s going to be extremely powerful.”


Groopie is backed by $350,000 in funding, from unnamed Zynga, PayPal and Apple angel investors, and others.

The app itself still feels a little rough around the edges in terms of its design, and the content itself is nowhere near as polished as what you’d find on YouTube. But it’s still the early days.

Groopie is free here on iTunes.

Obama #orders targeted air strikes, #humanitarian aid drops in #Iraq

#GNN - #President Barack #Obama said on Thursday he had authorized "targeted" U.S. #airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq and military airdrops of humanitarian supplies to besieged religious minorities there to prevent a "potential act of genocide."

Speaking after meetings with his national security team, Obama - in his most significant response to the Iraq crisis – said he approved limited use of American air power to protect American personnel if Islamic State militants advance toward the Kurdish capital Arbil where they are based.

The airstrikes would be the first carried out by the U.S. military in Iraq since the withdrawal of its forces at the end of 2011, but Obama insisted he would not commit any ground forces and had no intention of letting the United States get dragged back into a war there.


Obama took action amid international fears of a humanitarian catastrophe engulfing tens of thousands of members of Iraq’s minority Yazidi sect driven out of their homes and stranded on Sinjar mountain under threat from rampaging militants of Islamic State, an al Qaeda splinter group. Many Iraqi Christians have also fled for their lives.

"We can act carefully and responsibly to prevent a potential act of genocide," Obama told reporters at the White House. "I've therefore authorized targeted airstrikes if necessary."

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Eric Walsh)

U.N. chief, Security Council urge #international help for #Iraq

#GNN - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Security Council on Thursday called for the international community to help Iraq's government and people as the country struggles against a sweeping advance by Islamist militants.

The Security Council held an emergency meeting after Islamic State fighters surged toward the capital of the Kurdish region, sending tens of thousands of Christians fleeing for their lives, in an offensive that prompted talk of Western military action.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said he would circulate a draft resolution to the 15-member council later on Thursday that seeks to address the threat of the Islamic State - formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Lyall Grant said the text, which he hoped could be negotiated in the coming days, outlines practical steps for "tackling the funding and recruitment for ISIL" and also proposes listing key Islamic State leaders under the Security Council's al Qaeda sanctions regime.

In a statement, Ban called "on the international community, especially those with the influence and resources to positively impact the situation, to support the Government and people of Iraq and to do all it can to help alleviate the suffering of the population affected by the current conflict in Iraq."

The Security Council echoed Ban's call and condemned "the systematic persecution of individuals from minority populations and those who refuse the extremist ideology of ISIL and associated armed groups."

"The members of the Security Council reiterate that widespread or systematic attacks directed against any civilian populations because of their ethnic background, political grounds, religion or belief may constitute a crime against humanity, for which those responsible must be held accountable," it said in a statement.

This was the third Security Council statement related to the Islamic State, which is considered more extreme than al Qaeda, in the past two weeks.

Ban said he was "deeply appalled" by reports of recent attacks by Islamic State militants in Kirkuk and Qaraqosh.

Sunni militants captured Qaraqosh, Iraq's biggest Christian town, prompting many residents to flee, while in Kirkuk two car bombs exploded and killed 11 people near a Shi'ite mosque holding displaced people, said security and medical sources.

The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria to rule over all Muslims, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish and Jonathan Oatis)

Easing tensions: Key parties back #govt overtures for #PTI talks

#GNN - #PESHAWAR / #ISLAMABAD: Frantic efforts were made to batten down the hatches as a political maelstrom continued to gather pace on Thursday with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif holding another round of meetings with leaders of political parties that supported the government in its overtures for dialogue with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Delegations of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Awami National Party (ANP) and National Party (NP) held separate meetings with the premier.

According to sources, the political leaders assured the PM that they would not support any undemocratic forces. They also advised the government to use the democratic route to deal with the crisis and also called on Imran Khan to review his demands and come to the negotiating table.

Imran Khan wants PM Nawaz to hand in his resignation and hold a midterm election under a new election commission.

The PPP’s Senator Raza Rabbani and the ANP delegation expressed their concern over invocation of Article 245 and summoning of military to the federal capital.

The PM appreciated the suggestions of the delegations and said the government wanted to resolve the matter through democratic means.

The MQM delegation – led by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan – offered to act as a bridge between the government and the PTI in order to defuse tension, while assuring full support with regard to electoral reforms.

The MQM also suggested calling an all parties conference (APC) to discuss and generate consensus of the PTI’s Azadi March and Dr Tahirul Qadri’s call for revolution.

“We have asked the PM to find a middle ground and will also ask the PTI to go for a political solution; although holding rally is their fundamental right,” the MQM’s leader Dr Farooq Sattar said after the meeting with the premier.

Sattar added, there would be a political solution even if the PTI holds its march.

He said the government was ready to engage in talks, which was part of the political process and the option of talks should be exhausted before (the PTI) marches or protests. “We might not become guarantors but are ready to play the role of facilitators,” he added.

Responding to a question, Sattar said that his party had asked the government to respond to the demands of the PTI. “The country cannot afford agitation at this juncture as the situation might be exploited by some evil forces,” he added.

Sattar said the MQM was struggling for supremacy of the constitution and wanted participatory democracy to take root in the country. “These are testing times and we will continue the consultation process and we have asked the government to continue its efforts as well,” he added.

Addressing the media outside the PM house, the Awami National Party Senator Haji Adeel said his party supports democracy and urged the PTI chief to start a political dialogue with the government rather than resorting to sit-ins.

Referring to reports that the PTI has drafted demands to be presented to the government, Haji Adeel said that the government should talk to opposition parties and discuss their demands to find a solution. “The government seems interested in resolving issues through talks,” he said.

However, Haji Adeel said the Article 245 should be revoked as holding protest rallies was the right of political parties. He said the political parties should also guarantee that the protests will be peaceful.
ANP leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour went a step further and said that the PTI chief should have consulted opposition parties before taking any decision or making any demand.

“Qadri’s demands are unconstitutional,” said Haji Adeel in reference to Pakistan Awami Tehreek chief Dr Tahirul Qadri’s revolution march. Dr Qadri claims that the incumbent government will not be in power beyond the end of August. Talking to the media after his meeting, the National Party’s leader Mir Hasil Bizenjo asked the PTI chief to review his demands and hold talks with the government.

Meanwhile Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan also contacted Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leaders later in the evening. Government ministers responded to the proposals submitted to PM Nawaz a day earlier by JI chief Sirajul Haq.

According to sources, the PM has discussed Imran Khan’s demands with his party members. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has voiced hope that some good may emerge from the chaos. According to Express News, this is the first time the government has shown any flexibility in connection with Imran’s demands.

Plans to seal twin cities
While the government has said that it is ready to talk to the PTI about all its demands except the prime minister’s resignation and midterm elections, it has called around 5,000 additional police personnel from Punjab and Azad Kashmir to support 12,000 Islamabad police officials on August 14.

The Islamabad police have brought in around 400 containers to barricade different city routes ahead of the PTI’s “Azadi march”. Similarly, the Rawalpindi police will also place some 450 containers on different routes.

Ball is in federal govt’s court: JI chief
JI Ameer Sirajul Haq has said the ball is in the federal government’s court since the PTI has offered a four-point agenda, which needs to be seriously considered.

“Otherwise, incidents could happen on August 14 that would not be in favour of the current political set-up,” he told a news conference in Peshawar on Thursday. Haq said the armed forces must not intervene but acknowledged that the crisis was deepening with each passing day. “Whenever such kinds of situations emerge, some forces take advantage of them,” he said.

He said he had talked to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and supported his demand for bringing reforms into the electoral system since every political party wanted a free and fair election.

(Published in GNN, Tribune, AIP, August 8th, 2014.)

Record of Imran's contempt case to be used as documentary evidence in ex-CJ's defamation case, SC told

#GNN - #ISLAMABAD: Former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has explained to the Supreme Court that he wants access to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s contempt of court case records so that he can use it as documentary evidence to support of his defamation case.

Sheikh Ahsan, the counsel for Justice (retd) Chaudkhry, submitted an application before the apex court that wherein he stated that a notice under section 9 of defamation Ordinance 2002 was sent to Imran Khan for Rs20 billion as damages for mental agony, torture, harassment and damages to the reputation and image of former Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The former Chief Justice had sent the PTI chief a notice on July 24 toe either tender unconditional apology or to pay damages within 14 days.

The application argued that that former chief justice wants to file suit of defamation and Imran Khan’s contempt of court case records are related to the case. Justice (retd) Chaudhry further contended that the court’s August 28, 2013, judgment was public property and reported in PLD 2014 Supreme Court at page 367.

The apex court had on Wednesday asked the former chief justice to provide sound justifications for why he wanted access to Imran Khan’s contempt of court case records.

In its August 28, 2013 judgment, when Iftikhar Chaudry was Chief Justice, the court had urged politicians to use decent and guarded language, careful in their selection of words during public gatherings or press conferences.

Meanwhile, The Express Tribune has learnt that PTI’s legal team is drafting a reply to the defamation notice served by the former CJ.

A member of the party’s legal wing has confirmed that a team – led by Hamid Khan – has commenced working on Imran Khan’s reply to the law suit. However, he added that legal team is considering to respond to the defamation notice after the long march as they do not want to open too many fronts at once.

Yahoo To Strengthen Email Encryption

#GNN - #Yahoo will join #Google in providing users of its #email #service with end-to-end #encryption, #helping to keep the private communications of people protected from the prying eyes of governments and hackers alike. The company made the announcement on stage at the Black Hat security conference earlier today.

According to Yahoo chief information security officer Alex Stamos, Yahoo will publish the source code of the effort later this year. His group “is working closely with Google to ensure that [its] implementations of end-to-end encryption are compatible,” the executive said in a statement.

Google announced its efforts to provide end-to-end encryption to its email users in early June. Hopefully, the Yahoo-Google alliance will spread to other webmail providers, allowing for a network of popular email services to pass encrypted messages between themselves, helping keep a majority of users more secure in their digital papers.

The context for the above are the Snowden revelations that have led technology companies to greatly tighten their information security. Yahoo and Google have previously announced measures to bolster their internal encryption following the revelation that the NSA was targeting the cables between their data centers abroad.

More encryption in ways that the average consumer can use is precisely what the market needs. Good on Yahoo for working on this.

Hired Now #Helps Tech #Companies Find Executives

#GNN #Tech - #Hired, a startup working to make recruiting more efficient, has expanded to include a category for VPs of engineering and chief technical officers (CTOs).

Engineering Management is now the company’s fifth vertical. Mickiewicz notes that while the new category will naturally be smaller than the original engineering vertical, it is a very profitable and important addition, as many companies look to expensive executive search firms when hiring for these positions.

The startup, formerly known as DeveloperAuction, has been scaling as it fills its own internal hiring needs. CEO Matt Mickiewicz tells me internal needs drove the decision for Hired to launch UX/UI Designer, Data Scientist, and Head of Product verticals, and that Hired brought on employees in both categories off its own platform.

Just months after raising its $15 million Series A round, Hired seems to be growing at a healthy rate. Mickiewicz says the company currently has an eight-figure revenue run rate, and he notes that July 2014 revenue was triple January 2014’s revenue, when the company close the Series A.

Hired, which has a little under 50 employees, currently has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. Mickiewicz says Hired plans to open offices in Seattle, Boston, and London by early 2015.

In addition to expanding geographically, Mickiewicz says the company is looking a few years down the road at the non-tech hiring landscape. He specifically points to recruiting for the legal and finance sectors as potentially massive, profitable segments that “are really messy and broken.”

This expansion beyond tech is where Hired could really get interesting. An undergrad at Stanford emailed me a few days ago explaining how working in investment banking for a summer led her to change paths and learn to code; she specifically mentioned Hired, noting that she wished the recruiting process for non-technical jobs was better.

If Hired can keep growing its reach within technical recruiting while expanding to non-technical fields in the coming years, it could dramatically change the way companies recruit and hire talented people.

Wikipedia Picks Up $140,000 In #Bitcoin #Donations In One Week

#GNN - In late July, #Wikipedia announced that it would accept donations in bitcoin. In its first week of accepting bitcoin, Wikipedia racked up $140,000 in new funds, according to Coinbase, the service that powers its cryptocurrency influx.

CoinDesk, a publication that tracks bitcoin and other alternative, digital currencies heralds the news as suggesting “the staying power of digital currency donations, owing to the combination of tax benefits and transaction cost savings.” I’m slightly more skeptical, but it is without doubt that the donations are welcome at Wikipedia.

As TechCrunch previously reported, the Wikimedia Foundation — parent to Wikipedia — doesn’t intend to hold bitcoin, but instead convert it to dollars at the time of donation. TechCrunch also noted that the Foundation raised $18.7 million last year, making this $140,000 less than one percent of its prior haul. But one percent in a week could add up to a tidy figure, provided bitcoin donations continue.

Coinbase doesn’t charge non-profits transaction fees.

Recently, bitcoin has faded from the news media as the price of the stuff has settled into a predictable range, and volume isn’t growing. So, there hasn’t been too much to talk about.

What should we expect regarding donations to Wikipedia? That they slow down. How do we know? Bitcoin sales at Overstock.com slowed after an initial burst. Still, bitcoin donations to Wikipedia could make a material difference to its parent group.

IMAGE BY JASON BENJAMIN UNDER PUBLIC DOMAIN LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

Bikanta’s Tiny #Diamonds Find #Cancer Before It Spreads

#GNN - Y Combinator-backed biotech #company #Bikanta wants to find and stop cancer at its source by inserting tiny, fluorescent diamonds inside your body.

The brainchild of Dr. Ambika Bumb, who holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from Oxford, these nanodiamonds can detect molecular abnormalities at a much earlier stage, essentially stopping cancer from spreading any further.

Bumb was working on her first post-doctoral fellowship with the National Institute of Health (NIH) at Oxford University when she became dissatisfied with current limitations for cancer screening. Current methods are unable to detect small tumors or breakaway tumor cells that lead to something called micrometastatic tumors, which can go undetected at the source and lead to the spread of cancer throughout other areas of the body. Bumb also points out the technical limitations involving signal loss, high background interference and unacceptable toxicity that have sidelined research endeavors. Quantum dots (one of the two other fluorescence/optical imaging agents) are made of CdSe/Cds/ZnS core materials that are toxic, for example.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer rates around the world are expected to rise 57 percent over the next 20 years. That would mean cancer diagnoses would rise from an estimated annual total of 14 million to 22 million. Small or breakaway tumors go undetected each year, leading to unnecessary death. This is all because current methods don’t allow us to see them when they form.

This need for better methods of finding disease at the source has also led to a $3.5 billion market in optical imaging reagents. In other words, the market is huge for creating better fluorescent dyes, nanodiamonds and other things used to light up the insides of your body. The market could be worth up to $5 billion by 2017, according to BCC Research.

There’s also the challenge of un-mixing fluorescent signals from the background. Tools used to light up the molecular abnormalities, such as fluorescent dyes and quantum dots, are very limited in helping to literally highlight this problem. Fluorescent dye doesn’t give off any light if the molecular structure is different, for instance.

This is where the nanodiamonds come in. Bumb discovered that crushing up essentially imperfect diamonds into dust created a fluorescent, reflective light that could highlight any molecular abnormality. “It’s like having a flashlight inside your body that basically lasts forever,” says Bumb. This is also a breakthrough method not currently available in the market.

Nanodiamonds have an additional magnetic sensitivity property that can be used to resolve this issue. Initial tests revealed the signal-to-background ratio was improved in vivo by 100-fold with the fluorescent nanodiamonds. And, says Bumb, there is potential for even greater reduction of background noise with more testing. The technology has so far been used to visualize lymph nodes that were invisible in conventional imaging.

Beyond cancer detection is an even bigger potential here — precise, hands-free surgery. These nanodiamonds may one day be able carry cancer-destroying technology along with it. Unlike conventional nanodiamonds that form into clusters, Bikanta’s nanodiamonds remain separate but stable in liquid suspension, and they can be tightly bound to any targeting agent (e.g. aptamers, antibodies). This means Bikanta could create designer drugs with the diamond material that would effectively detect specific diseases. So, just as the nanodiamond material searches through the body to find molecular abnormalities, it also gets rid of them at that very moment.

“My thought is, if every doctor helps ten patients a day, engineers who create technology employed by a hundred doctors can help one thousand patients a day,” says Bumb.