Composer, Pulitzer winner Carter dies in NY at 103

NEW YORK (AP) — Classical composer Elliott Carter, whose challenging, rhythmically complex works earned him widespread admiration and two Pulitzer Prizes, died Monday at age 103.

His music publishing company, Boosey & Hawkes, called him an “iconic American composer.” It didn’t give the cause of his death.

In a 1992 Associated Press interview, Carter described his works as “music that asks to be listened to in a concentrated way and listened to with a great deal of attention.”

“It’s not music that makes an overt theatrical effect,” he said then, “but it assumes the listener is listening to sounds and making some sense out of them.”

The complex way the instruments interact in his compositions created drama for listeners who made the effort to understand them, but it made them difficult for orchestras to learn. He said he tried to give each of the musicians individuality within the context of a comprehensible whole.

“This seems to me a very dramatic thing in a democratic society,” he said.

While little known to the general public, he was long respected by an inner circle of critics and musicians. In 2002, The New York Times said his string quartets were among “the most difficult music ever conceived,” and it hailed their “volatile emotions, delicacy and even, in places, plucky humor.”

Carter had remained astonishingly active, taking new commissions even as he celebrated his 100th birthday in December 2008 with a gala at Carnegie Hall.

“I’m always proud of the ones I’ve just written,” he said at the time.

In 2005, his “Dialogues,” which had premiered the previous year, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music. And in 2006, his “Boston Concerto” was nominated for a Grammy Award as best classical contemporary composition.

Carter won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his Second String Quartet; his second award was in 1973 for his Third String Quartet. The Juilliard String Quartet chose to mark its 45th anniversary in 1991 with a concert of all four Carter string quartets. A fifth quartet came out in 1995.

When the first National Medal of Arts awards were given in 1985, Carter was one of 10 people honored, along with such legends as Martha Graham, Ralph Ellison and Georgia O’Keeffe. The awards were established by Congress in 1984.

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music said that at its best, Carter’s music “sustains an energy of invention that is unrivaled in contemporary composition.”

Carter said he found Europeans more receptive to his works than his fellow Americans because music in Europe is not purely entertainment but part of the culture, “something that people make an effort to understand.”

The lack of widespread attention didn’t seem to bother him.

“I don’t think it means anything to be popular,” he said. “When we see the popular tastes and the popular opinion constantly being manipulated by all sorts of different ways, it seems to me popularity is a meaningless matter.”

In 1992, Carter said his favorite piece of music was his Concerto for Orchestra, written in 1969. It was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary season.

“It particularly expresses a picture of the United States as an evolving world of not only people but of nature,” he said.

Among his early works were two ballets, “The Minotaur” and “Pocahontas,” and his First Symphony. His First String Quartet in 1951 started him on the road to greater critical attention.

Besides composing, Carter wrote extensively about 20th-century music. A collection of articles, “The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music,” was published in 1977.

Carter as born in New York in 1908. As a young man he became acquainted with composer Charles Ives, who encouraged his ambitions. He studied literature at Harvard and then studied music in Paris under famed teacher Nadia Boulanger, who also guided Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson.

As Carter turned 100, he recalled a visit to the hall in 1924 to see the New York premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary work “The Rite of Spring.”

“I thought it was the greatest thing I ever heard, and I wanted to do like that, too,” Carter recalled. “Of course, half the audience walked out, which was even more pleasant to me. It seemed much more exciting than Beethoven and Brahms and the rest of them.”

In 1939, he married sculptor Helen H. Frost Jones. They had one son. He is survived by his son and a grandson.

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Laser Microscope Technology Detects Metastatic Breast Cancer Without Damaging Lymph Nodes

FIRST PERSON | Researchers at Johns Hopkins University published a study in the Nov. 1, 2012, edition of The Journal of Biomedical Optics, which examined collagen one fibers (Col1) found in breast cancer tumors. They used special laser microscope technology called second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy to examine Col1 fibers. As a result of this study, doctors can now tell whether breast cancer has metastasized. The study concluded using SHG microscopy allows doctors to determine if breast cancer is metastatic without having to compromise the lymph system.

The study

Collagen 1 fiber density increases in lymph node positive breast cancers: pilot study, by Samata M. Kakkad, et al, of Johns Hopkins University, describes how the Col1 fibers in lymph node-positive breast cancers differ greatly in density from lymph node-negative breast cancers. If cancer cells are detected in the lymph nodes, it is considered metastatic. Metastatic disease is an advanced form of cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.

Impact on breast cancer patients

The study shows that denser Col1 fibers indicate the cancer has metastasized. For breast cancer patients, like me, this is a huge discovery. Being able to identify metastatic disease without having to undergo painful lymph node procedures is a major improvement in patient care. It will greatly add to the quality of life after a cancer diagnosis.

Prior to breast surgery, many physicians order sentinel node mapping for their patients. This is a painful procedure that involves injecting radioactive dye into the nipple or near the tumor area. Once the dye is spread throughout the breast, the surgeon uses a Geiger counter to locate the lymph nodes used by the tumor. SHG technology will remove the need for sentinel node mapping if the Col1 fibers show the cancer has not metastasized.

During a mastectomy or lumpectomy, women with breast cancer have three or more lymph nodes removed for examination. The removal of the lymph nodes leaves women at a high risk for a serious medical condition called lymphedema. I had three lymph nodes removed during my mastectomy. So far, I’ve only had to deal with minor lymphedema symptoms, like minor swelling and stiffness. Examination of Col1 fibers would have eliminated the need for me to go through this.

Eliminating the need for painful procedures

All breast tumors are examined prior to a lumpectomy or mastectomy through biopsy. This is how the doctors arrive at the initial cancer diagnosis, but they cannot tell from the biopsy sample if the cancer has spread to other areas.

Examining the tissue sample through laser microscope technology, like SHG microscopy, at the time of biopsy, eliminates the need for the painful sentinel node mapping and removal of lymph nodes in early-stage breast cancers. It also removes the need for expensive procedures like bone scans and CT scans if the tissue sample shows that the cancer is not metastatic. Access to new technology like this greatly improves treatment for breast cancer.

Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My Battle With Breast Cancer.”

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Fed’s Williams: Policies have aided growth without undue fallout

IRVINE, California (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve‘s unconventional monetary policies have lowered borrowing costs and boosted growth without creating unwanted inflation, a top Fed official said on Monday, predicting the Fed’s latest round of asset-buying will exceed $ 600 billion.

The Fed will want to see sustained jobs gains and a consistent drop in the unemployment rate before it stops buying assets, making it likely the purchases will continue until “well into next year,” John Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, told reporters after a lecture at the University of California, Irvine.

The U.S. central bank’s prior round of quantitative easing totaled $ 600 billion; its first one was about $ 1.7 trillion.

The Fed began its third round of quantitative easing, known as QE3, in September, beginning with $ 40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities and promising to continue or expand the purchases if the labor market does not improve substantially.

Although asset-buying and other non-traditional monetary policies pose potential risks, “the available evidence suggests they have been effective in stimulating growth without creating an undesirable rise in inflation,” Williams said at the lecture. “We are not seeing signs of rising inflation on the horizon.”

The policies also have not stimulated excessive risk-taking, he said.

The Fed lowered short-term interest rates to zero in December 2008, and has bought more than $ 2 trillion in long-term securities to lower borrowing costs even more.

August 2011 it moved further into unconventional territory by saying it planned to keep rates ultra-low for about two more years, a form of policy easing known as forward guidance.

In September, the Fed launched a third round of asset purchases and promised to keep rates low until at least mid-2015.

The latest asset purchase program kicked off with an initial $ 40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities, and the Fed said it will continue or expand the program until the jobs situation improves substantially.

Unemployment was 7.9 percent last month, considerably higher than the 5 percent to 6 percent that most economists see as the norm for the U.S. economy. Inflation has averaged below the Fed’s 2 percent target over the past year.

Williams told the largely student audience that the Fed’s first two rounds of asset-buying likely shaved 1.5 percentage points from the unemployment rate. They also probably kept the U.S. economy from falling into deflation, he said.

Forward guidance has also become a key monetary policy tool, he said. The Fed’s first stab at it, in August 2011 when it promised low rates until mid-2013, pushed down borrowing costs sharply, equivalent to cutting short-term interest rates by 3/4 to 1 percentage point, he said.

Such guidance only works if the public believes the central bank will do what it says, he added.

“If the public doesn’t understand the central bank’s intended policy path, then forward guidance may not work so well,” he said.

One way for the central bank to reinforce public expectations is to buy assets on a large scale, effectively “putting its money where its mouth is,” he said. Buying assets shows the Fed is “determined to ease monetary conditions,” he said – and helps push down rates further.

Quantifying the effects of the Fed’s policies is difficult, he added, but “the presence of uncertainty does not mean that we shouldn’t be using these tools.”

Williams has been a strong supporter of the U.S. central bank’s super-easy monetary policy and is a voter this year on the Fed’s policy-setting committee.

Once it comes time to exit its super-easy monetary policy, the Fed will target a “soft landing,” raising rates and then selling the assets it has accumulated in its bid to push borrowing costs lower, Williams said.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Leslie Adler and Lisa Shumaker)

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Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

“The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

The country’s labor minister, Kate Wilkinson, resigned from her labor portfolio after the report’s release, saying she felt it was the honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the disaster, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report’s conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission’s report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety problems. It also recommended a raft of measures to strengthen mine oversight.

Key said his government would consider the recommendations and hoped to implement most of them. He would not commit on forming a new agency. Workplace safety issues are currently one of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings from mine workers that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the deadly explosion.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a “major error” by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

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Everyday Objects Photographed as Childlike Adventures

1. Zesty Mower

“It was so like Patty. Right idea. Wrong execution.” Image used with permission by Christopher Boffoli

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: The Top 250 Movies of All Time in Less Than 3 Minutes [VIDEO]]

Children let their imaginations run wild, turning everyday scenarios like breakfast at the kitchen table into a fantasy world.

As we grow more familiar with our surroundings, things become “normal” and lose that sense of wild curiosity.

[More from Mashable: ‘We’re Apple, And You’re Suckers,’ Says iPad Mini Parody Ad]

Photographer Christopher Boffoli created the series Big Appetites with that same imaginative, childlike mindset. The photos, shown above, play on object scale and words, adding tiny, detailed figurines of people to real food environments. A cup of tea turns into a scuba diving adventure, and cylindrical pasta becomes a pipeline factory.

“As a child you live in an adult world that is out of scale with your body and proportions. And you constantly exercise your imagination around a world of toys that are further out of scale,” says Boffoli.

Each photo is paired with a humorous caption that Boffoli says adds “an element of surprise and humor that things aren’t simply as they appear.”

The series will be exhibited in Seattle and Singapore this month, and a book on Bofolli’s work will release next year.

What sort of imaginative adventures did you go on as a child? Let us know in the comments below.

Images used with permission by Christopher Boffoli

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Lucas plans ‘little personal films’ in future

NEW YORK (AP) — George Lucas is done with “Star Wars,” but not with filmmaking.

The “Star Wars” creator says he’s looking forward to making his “own little personal films” that he doubts will be for the theater crowd.

Lucas spoke Friday night at Ebony magazine‘s Power 100 Gala, days after announcing the sale of his storied Lucasfilm to Disney for $ 4.05 billion. The deal would allow for more “Star Wars” films.

Lucas was “very sad” let Lucasfilm go but excited about his educational foundation, which will benefit from the sale. He also plans to make more movies. His last one was this year’s “Red Tails,” about the Tuskegee Airmen, but he said he barely got it in theaters. He said the movies he’s working on now “will never get into theaters.”

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Angioplasty costs are higher at non-surgery hospitals

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Angioplasty to clear blocked arteries costs more at hospitals not equipped for emergency heart surgery, according to a study presented on Sunday at the American Heart Association scientific meeting.

Elective angioplasty is becoming increasingly common at hospitals that do not conduct more complicated heart procedures. During angioplasty, doctors insert a balloon-tipped catheter into an artery and inflate a balloon to open the narrowed blood vessel.

Researchers from Duke University Medical School in North Carolina analyzed billing data from more than 18,000 patients and found that the average cumulative medical costs were $ 23,991 in surgery-equipped hospitals, versus $ 25,460 in those without surgical centers.

“Surprisingly, there was no difference in procedure cost,” said Dr. Eric Eisenstein, lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Duke. “We did find a difference in follow-up cost.”

The difference was due mainly to the fact that non-surgery hospitals used intensive care units for post-angioplasty care, as required by the study, and patients treated at these hospitals were more likely to be readmitted nine months after treatment.

“Rising costs of medical care make it very pertinent for us to assess value,” said Dr. Mark Hlatky, director of the cardiovascular outcomes research center at Stanford University.

Eisenstein said, “there is no guarantee that a community hospital can provide angioplasty services at costs comparable with those of major hospitals with on-site cardiac surgery.”

More than 1 million coronary artery opening procedures are performed in the United States each year, according to the American Heart Association.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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India’s Outsourcing Firms Must Boost Morale

India’s business-process-outsourcing (BPO) companies have a problem. The $ 50 billion industry has enjoyed phenomenal growth: The top 20 BPO companies’ employee base grew 12 percent in 2011, according to Dataquest, and the domestic market is expanding.

Yet BPO companies are struggling to attract the right talent. Not long ago, a BPO job was considered prestigious and financially beneficial, but lately potential candidates have opted for jobs in more traditional sectors such as banking, retail, and manufacturing. One of the critical issues facing business leaders today is the people perception that BPO jobs are unattractive. Rebranding could help change this view, but leaders can only achieve a true shift in people’s perceptions of BPO jobs when professionals in the industry view them as an attractive career option. When BPO employees feel loyalty to their companies and advocate for them, they provide excellent images of the industry to the outside world.

However, a study based on Gallup data indicates that BPO companies are unlikely to change people’s perspectives of them while the industry continues on its current path. A Gallup analysis of more than 75,000 respondents across eight BPO organizations over a two-year period indicates that a mere 28 percent of employees strongly agree that they intend to stay with their organization for the next two years; the same number strongly agree that they would recommend their organization to friends or family members.

The low level of loyalty shown by this number should worry any business leader concerned about employee turnover costs and lost productivity. But there is another issue here: When less than one in three employees strongly believes in a BPO employer, it is unlikely that young aspirants looking to embark on a career will meet mentors or advisers who would urge them to pursue a job with a BPO organization. This is true in any industry, but it is especially true in India: Indians typically rely on advice from people in their social networks, especially when it comes to big decisions such as choosing a school, a neighborhood, or a profession. While industry specific information is typically publicly available, many Indians tend to make key decisions after receiving direct advice from a trusted person.

That leads to the critical roadblock to acquiring talent in the BPO industry: Because of current experience in their organizations, these trusted sources are more likely to guide young, aspiring professionals into other industries.

The first step in reshaping the BPO industry’s image is to focus on existing BPO professionals’ needs. Gallup investigated the difference between extremely loyal advocates of the industry and those who take the opposite view and found two critical factors separating the groups: first, the contribution an employee’s job makes to the mission and purpose of the organization and second, the opportunities each employee has to learn and grow on the job.

While these factors are common across industries, the range of their effect on engagement and subsequently loyalty and advocacy in the BPO industry is tremendous. For example, when employees can strongly agree with two statements from Gallup’s engagement assessment designed to measure employee-engagement conditions, (“The mission or purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important” and This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow”), their engagement levels increase to the 92nd engagement percentile of the overall workforce in India. Indeed, at those levels these workers become some of the most engaged employees. Being able to strongly agree with just one of the two items boosts employee engagement to above-average levels—into the 69th percentile of the workforce in India.

However, when an employee cannot strongly agree with either item, his or her engagement level falls to the 20th percentile of the India database. Such low levels of engagement drastically affect employees’ ability to be successful at work and ultimately their overall well being.

This lack of employee agreement with the key factors of loyalty and advocacy is an important signal to BPO company leaders. Increasing employee engagement affects loyalty and advocacy in the industry. Gallup data show that “engaged” employees are at least four times more likely than employees who are “not engaged” and 15 times more likely than “actively disengaged” employees to become advocates for their organizations in their social networks. Gallup has seen similar trends among employees regarding loyalty.

However, three out of five employees do not understand their role in fulfilling their organization’s mission and are unclear on how they will grow in their organization. The critical goal for BPO industry leaders is to connect their employee base with the vision of the company and to explain to employees how to achieve this vision and what the path forward will look like. If BPO companies can show workers the direction forward, the industry’s path will suddenly look a lot clearer, too.

Gill is a Senior Consultant with the strategic consulting firm Gallup in India. He works with clients in the technology, hospitality, financial services, and business services sectors in India, Australia, and Japan.

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages

LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.

Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.

In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”

Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.

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Softbank changes eAccess share swap ratio after stock decline

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Softbank Corp said on Friday it will change its share swap ratio with eAccess Ltd, which it acquired in a $ 1.84 billion deal at the start of last month.

Softbank said it will change the swap ratio to 20.09 from 16.74. The decision follows a decline in Softbank’s share price that took place after it announced in October that it would buy a 70 percent stake in Sprint Nextel Corp, the third-largest U.S. carrier.

(Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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