Not all glitches are unintentional and problematic. Glitch art introduces, on purpose, digital typos that would otherwise be edited out in an image.
Kevin Wong/Flickr
Not all glitches are unintentional and problematic. Glitch art introduces, on purpose, digital typos that would otherwise be edited out in an image.
Kevin Wong/Flickr
HealthCare.gov, the faulty website where people can sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, has become nearly synonymous with the word "glitch" — sometimes defensively, sometimes mockingly.
The linguistic firestorm probably was sparked, or at least fanned, by HealthCare.gov's champion, President Obama himself. As he said on Oct. 1, the first day of the HealthCare.gov rollout:
"Now, like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix. I've been saying this from the start."
If the word choice was intentional, it could have been a way to normalize potential problems, says Robert Terrill, associate professor of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University.
"People are used to it. They're used to having glitches on software and websites," he says. "It seems to connote something small and easily repairable."
Some have argued that the problems with HealthCare.gov are too large to qualify as mere glitches. But that depends, of course, on where you place "glitch" on the hiccup-to-catastrophe spectrum. And a little digging around old dictionaries and newspapers shows that its place on the spectrum has changed over time.
But it seems to first come into the vernacular in the 1960s and '70s — in the context of small, unforeseen technical errors in space travel.
Astronaut John Glenn used the word in his 1962 book, Into Orbit: "Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was 'glitch'. Literally, a glitch ... is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it."
In 1965, The St. Petersburg Timesreported that a glitch ("as technicians call such abnormalities," it clarified) had altered the computer memory inside the U.S. spacecraft Gemini 6. Six years later, The Miami News talked about a failure in Apollo 14 that almost prevented a successful moon landing:
"Nobody knows yet why the mechanism failed. Engineers were unable to make it fail in hundreds of tests on the ground. Such 'glitches' worry engineers — they can't cure a disease if they are unable to diagnose it."
Uses like that may have led a 1978 thesaurus to include the word as a synonym for catastrophe. (In comparison, modern thesauruses often equate it to a flaw.) If then-President Jimmy Carter was introducing a new program, his speechwriters probably would have steered clear.
The Golden Age Of Glitches
Little by little, as computers became more widespread in society, so did glitches.
And it was the perfect word to describe a computer bug that many feared would cause an apocalyptic crisis: Y2K. Remember that? "Glitch" found linguistic fame as people speculated about what would happen when computer clocks turned to Jan. 1, 2000.
Some folks stocked up on water bottles and canned food in case the electricity went out; the U.S. and Russia feared a nuclear warhead might be accidentally launched; and airlines and air traffic controllers reportedly spent $2.5 billion "to assure that their computers could read the year 2000 correctly," according to The New York Times.
Despite all warnings, as the clock struck midnight, nothing much actually happened. Perhaps that's the association Obama was trying to make, too.
"The pre-hype to [Y2K] was that this was going to be something catastrophic, and it turned out to be merely a glitch," says Terrill, from Indiana University. "If that's the most common use of a term, I can see why it carried over to the Obamacare website."
Terrill notes that words are often the battleground of politics, as leaders try to "grab hold of language and define terms in particular ways." So the meaning of the word may change as the HealthCare.gov conversation continues.
Obama, for one, may already be distancing himself from it. He had many words to say about his frustrations with the site in a speech Monday, but "glitch" was not one of them.
A pair of elderly couples take in the view in La Jolla, Calif., on March 8, 2012. To keep Social Security solvent as life spans increase, the United States should look to the sovereign wealth funds of nations from Singapore to Norway.
Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters
Social Security taxes people when they work and pays them a monthly benefit when they retire. The amount of your monthly check is driven by a formula based on how much you paid in Social Security taxes while you were working. But the total amount of money you collect from Social Security depends on both the size of your monthly check and how many years you stick around to collect it. The impact of advances in life expectancy since the 1930s on Social Security is often wildly overstated, but future improvements in health that make three-digit lifespans common could be very problematic as a matter of public finance.
And yet while increased longevity is often cited on these grounds as a reason to cut Social Security benefits, there’s a fundamental illogic to that inference. It’s like saying high crime justifies cutbacks in police departments, or rising birthrates should lead to teacher layoffs. Different public services serve different purposes. Social Security is the public service aimed at establishing a floor of living standards for the aged. If people live longer, that will put more strain on the service, but it also underscores its central importance. Sustaining the program over the long term probably will require some cuts, but looking to a cuts-only framework for Social Security is foolish. That’s especially true because the program actually grows less and less adequate as people age.
Your initial benefit level is pegged to the average rate of wage growth since the peak of your earnings power. The idea is that Social Security should allow you to keep up with the Joneses in terms of overall national living standards.
Saying increased longevity means we should cut Social Security benefits is like saying high crime justifies cutbacks in police.
But once you begin receiving benefits, your check is adjusted upward each year by the inflation rate. Over time, wages and living standards tend to grow faster than inflation—life gets better, in other words. Social Security does not really allow the elderly to participate in these rising living standards over long periods of time. If you begin collecting a modest-but-meaningful check at 67, by the time you reach 100 its value compared with the average family’s income will have diminished considerably. That’s why thoughtful Social Security reform approaches, like the one Christian Weller devised for the Center for American Progress in 2010, envision increasing the benefits for the very elderly.
The question of course becomes how to pay for a program adequate to the scale of the country’s needs.
Taxes are part of the picture, but one important idea should come to us from a now-forgotten aspect of the debate over the Bush tax cuts. Back in 2001, you see, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan endorsed a large cut in taxes on the grounds that the federal budget deficit was becoming too low. Right now Social Security collects more in payroll taxes than it spends in benefits, in order to anticipate the eventual retirement of the baby boomers. But that Social Security surplus is invested in federal government debt. These investments produce a Social Security Trust Fund that in effect is more of an accounting convention than an investment vehicle. Greenspan warned that unless we cut taxes to increase the deficit, we might run out of debt for the Trust Fund to buy, and it would be forced to move into other asset classes, like owning stocks and corporate bonds. That, Greenspan warned, would lead to all manner of political malfeasance in the private economy.
With more than a decade of subsequent history under our belts, this looks like excessive fear of socialism pushing the country into unsound fiscal policy. And we should be open to the opposite conclusion. It’s time to stop letting excessive fear of socialism block us from doing the sensible thing and investing Social Security funds in private assets. The spread of successful sovereign wealth funds from Persian Gulf monarchies and Singapore to Norway and even Canada shows us that it’s workable in principle. And any investment adviser would tell you that an all-Treasurys portfolio is an exceptionally risk-averse posture—one that individuals or institutions with long time horizons should avoid. As the American government aspires to last essentially forever, it ought to have a fairly aggressive investment portfolio.
The concern that such a fund’s clout would be put to bad political purposes ought to be addressed rather than simply used as a conversation-stopper. Rather than one gigantic fund, the government could create 30 smaller ones to which citizens are randomly assigned. Or the government could sponsor a discrete set of private funds run by existing investment companies and let citizens opt into the one of their choice. The name of the game is to avoid creating a single entity so enormous that it dominates the marketplace, while still taking advantage of the kind of scale enjoyed by major university endowments or small countries’ sovereign wealth funds.
Longer life spans are going to make the basic promise of Social Security both more important and more difficult to maintain. To get there, we need to break out of the old mold and put the American people’s money to work.
In this photo taken Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester waits to throw during the first inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series in Boston. Tyler Melling, a Cardinals minor leaguer has suggested Lester may have used a foreign substance to aid his pitches during his win over St. Louis in the World Series opener. Melling wrote Wednesday night on Twitter: "Jon Lester using a little Vaseline inside the glove tonight?" with a screen shot appearing to show discoloration on Lester's black glove. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
In this photo taken Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester waits to throw during the first inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series in Boston. Tyler Melling, a Cardinals minor leaguer has suggested Lester may have used a foreign substance to aid his pitches during his win over St. Louis in the World Series opener. Melling wrote Wednesday night on Twitter: "Jon Lester using a little Vaseline inside the glove tonight?" with a screen shot appearing to show discoloration on Lester's black glove. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester throws during the first inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester throws during the first inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
BOSTON (AP) — Jon Lester says there was nothing but rosin — which is perfectly legal — on his glove when he beat the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series.
A Cardinals minor leaguer posted a screen shot on Twitter showing a green substance on Lester's glove. Tyler Melling, a 25-year-old pitcher in the Florida State League, wrote: "Jon Lester using a little Vaseline inside the glove tonight?"
The Boston Red Sox left-hander said before Game 2 on Thursday night that "I can honestly tell you that all I use is rosin. So, it's obviously frustrating that after a night like last night, we should be having fun and running around with some energy today and I've got to stand here and answer questions about it."
Lester allowed five hits in 7 2-3 scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and a walk in the Red Sox's 8-1 victory.
Boston manager John Farrell also said Lester uses only rosin, which is provided on the pitcher's mound, to get a better grip.
"If you know Jon Lester, he sweats like a pig and he needs rosin," Farrell said before Game 2. "I don't see this as anything at all."
Major League Baseball said in a statement Thursday that "we cannot draw any conclusions from this video. There were no complaints from the Cardinals and the umpires never detected anything indicating a foreign substance throughout the game."
Section 8.02 of the Official Baseball Rules says a pitcher "shall not apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball" and says the penalty for a violation is ejection and an automatic suspension.
"MLB has obviously evaluated it and issued a statement," Farrell said. "We consider it closed."
Melling's tweet was later deleted.
"Obviously, when I get a text at 2 o'clock in the morning, it's not fun," a composed Lester said. "I understand. I saw the picture. It looks bad."
He also said he sweats a lot and rosin helps control that.
"I throw rosin in my glove. That's it," Lester said. "I warm up with one hat in the bullpen and then have to change hats when I come in (to the dugout). I've had plenty of games where I've got sweat dripping off my brim. I've put rosin on my hat before to try to stop it. You do a lot of different things to just try to try to contain it.
"Even on a cold night like last night, I'm still sweating, so you've got to do certain things to try to keep a grip on the ball and not let it slip, and rosin is one of those things that seems to help me."
Asked if he's sure that rosin was the only substance in Lester's glove, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said, "this was not instigated by us. And the way that we approach this is we just play the game. We don't deny that some things have been acknowledged. And if that's what he claims, then that's what it is. That's all there is to it. And right now it's pretty much a dead issue."
Lester said the issue wouldn't affect him in the future.
"I played with Jon basically my whole professional career," Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. "He kind of sweats a lot, man. I know he loads up with rosin all over the place. I don't even like going out there and telling him 'good job,' and patting him on the back because you get all wet and stuff."
If you've ever stepped foot in an intensive care unit, you'll know that they can be pretty grim environments. That's all changing, though, thanks to LED lighting systems that can actually be used to improve patient care.
PARIS (AP) — Condemned apartments covered in spray paint have probably never been in such demand.
An entire apartment tower in eastern Paris has been turned over to 105 street artists from around the world, giving them a chance to turn each home into its own art installation during the building's final days.
The artists had seven months to tag "Tour Paris 13" — named for the district where it's located — coating apartments sometimes still filled with debris, trash and furniture. All their work will vanish by the end of the year, as the tower, which has nine stories and a basement, is demolished piece by piece after next week.
"I really wanted the artist to intervene on a whole space," said Mehdi Ben Cheikh, the gallery owner who initiated the project. "I didn't want the spectators to come and look at art. I wanted the spectators to come and enter an art work ... which means there are things everywhere — we enter a room, and have to turn around in every direction to understand the surroundings."
The result is a tower exhibiting a range of artistic styles. There's a skull-inspired mural, Arabic calligraphy, a bloody bathroom, and a glow-in-the-dark cow crawling with snakes.
Would-be visitors have lined up for up to eight hours for a one-hour visit, with signs at various points around the block estimating their wait time. Only 49 people are allowed in at one time in the apartment block, which overlooks the Seine.
A handful of people are still living in the building and refusing to leave until the bitter end.
Some of the artists of Tour Paris 13 are participating in an unprecedented international urban contemporary art auction on Friday, with pieces created spur of the moment on Thursday standing alongside works from Keith Haring and Basquiat.
"I've been following graffiti and street art for about 30 years and so this represents another step in slightly different direction," said Martha Cooper, the famous street photographer who is documenting their work in progress. "Having an auction in Paris, in a big auction house, is pretty amazing."
A 1986 Basquiat piece, "Monticello," is estimated to sell at 600,000 to 900,000 euros ($828,180 to $1.2 million), and a 1984 acrylic of Keith Haring's "Sneeze," from 500,000 to 700,000 euros.
"We are the new artists. Graffiti art is the world's biggest art movement," said Mear One, an artist from Los Angeles who was painting live outside the Drouot Auction House on Thursday. "In the 1970s, art was so elite that only the upper level people could do art or appreciate. So it got boring ... and now, we are in a situation where this is the art form.
"All that other art is cool, but it has roots in the past, and we are the here and the now."
Preclinical study finds drug helps against pancreatic cancer
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Oct-2013
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Contact: Deirdre Branley sciencenews@einstein.yu.edu 718-430-3101 Albert Einstein College of Medicine
October 23, 2013(BRONX, NY)An investigational drug that disrupts tumor blood vessels shows promise against a rare type of pancreatic cancer, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found. Their results were presented October 20 during a poster session at an international cancer conference.
The drug Zybrestat selectively targets and collapses tumor blood vessels, depriving the tumor of oxygen and making its cells die. In experiments involving a mouse model of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, Einstein scientists found that infusing mice with Zybrestat three times per week for four weeks resulted in significant antitumor activity compared with control mice given a placebo.
The findings were presented in Boston at the American Association for Cancer Research-National Cancer Institute-European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. Presenting for Einstein was ZiQiang Yuan, M.D., research assistant professor of surgery at Einstein. The senior author is Steven K. Libutti, M.D., professor of genetics at Einstein and professor and vice chair of surgery at Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 45,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013 and more than 38,000 will die of the disease. Exocrine pancreatic cancer, the more common and usually fatal type, begins in the ducts that carry pancreatic juices. The Einstein study involved endocrine pancreatic cancerthe much less common and more curable form of the disease that originates in pancreatic cells that make hormones (and that caused the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs).
All the mice in the study had insulinomasendocrine tumors that form in pancreatic cells that make insulin, the hormone that controls glucose levels in the blood. This type of tumor can make the pancreas over-secrete insulin. The Einstein researchers found that treating the mice with Zybrestat caused a significant and sustained decrease in circulating insulin and also significantly reduced tumor size.
Zybrestat has been evaluated in clinical trials involving patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer, a highly aggressive cancer for which there are no approved treatments. The drug is made by OXiGENE, Inc., a biotech company based in San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Libutti is also director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care and associate director, clinical services at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center.
This research was supported in part by OXiGENE, Inc. through a sponsored research agreement with Einstein. The authors report no conflicts of interest.
###
About Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2013-2014 academic year, Einstein is home to 734 M.D. students, 236 Ph.D. students, 106 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 353 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 2,000 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2013, Einstein received more than $155 million in awards from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Through its extensive affiliation network involving Montefiore, Jacobi Medical CenterEinstein's founding hospital, and five other hospital systems in the Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island and Brooklyn, Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu and follow us on Twitter @EinsteinMed.
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Preclinical study finds drug helps against pancreatic cancer
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Oct-2013
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Contact: Deirdre Branley sciencenews@einstein.yu.edu 718-430-3101 Albert Einstein College of Medicine
October 23, 2013(BRONX, NY)An investigational drug that disrupts tumor blood vessels shows promise against a rare type of pancreatic cancer, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found. Their results were presented October 20 during a poster session at an international cancer conference.
The drug Zybrestat selectively targets and collapses tumor blood vessels, depriving the tumor of oxygen and making its cells die. In experiments involving a mouse model of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, Einstein scientists found that infusing mice with Zybrestat three times per week for four weeks resulted in significant antitumor activity compared with control mice given a placebo.
The findings were presented in Boston at the American Association for Cancer Research-National Cancer Institute-European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. Presenting for Einstein was ZiQiang Yuan, M.D., research assistant professor of surgery at Einstein. The senior author is Steven K. Libutti, M.D., professor of genetics at Einstein and professor and vice chair of surgery at Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 45,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013 and more than 38,000 will die of the disease. Exocrine pancreatic cancer, the more common and usually fatal type, begins in the ducts that carry pancreatic juices. The Einstein study involved endocrine pancreatic cancerthe much less common and more curable form of the disease that originates in pancreatic cells that make hormones (and that caused the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs).
All the mice in the study had insulinomasendocrine tumors that form in pancreatic cells that make insulin, the hormone that controls glucose levels in the blood. This type of tumor can make the pancreas over-secrete insulin. The Einstein researchers found that treating the mice with Zybrestat caused a significant and sustained decrease in circulating insulin and also significantly reduced tumor size.
Zybrestat has been evaluated in clinical trials involving patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer, a highly aggressive cancer for which there are no approved treatments. The drug is made by OXiGENE, Inc., a biotech company based in San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Libutti is also director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care and associate director, clinical services at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center.
This research was supported in part by OXiGENE, Inc. through a sponsored research agreement with Einstein. The authors report no conflicts of interest.
###
About Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2013-2014 academic year, Einstein is home to 734 M.D. students, 236 Ph.D. students, 106 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 353 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 2,000 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2013, Einstein received more than $155 million in awards from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Through its extensive affiliation network involving Montefiore, Jacobi Medical CenterEinstein's founding hospital, and five other hospital systems in the Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island and Brooklyn, Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu and follow us on Twitter @EinsteinMed.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp cruised past Wall Street's quarterly profit and revenue forecasts on Thursday, helped by strong sales of its Office and server software to businesses, sending its shares up 6 percent after hours.
The world's largest software company is the latest tech firm to surprise investors with a powerful performance, coming the same day as Amazon.com Inc eased past average revenue forecasts.
Technology is proving one of the most resilient sectors in an uncertain economy, with 84 percent of tech companies beating analysts' earnings estimates for the latest quarter.
Analysts had trimmed profit estimates for Microsoft over the past three months, concerned by the launch of an ambitious reorganization by retiring Chief Executive Stave Ballmer and the pricey acquisition of Nokia's handset business, even as the company's core personal computer market ebbs away.
"The earnings report will positively surprise the market, especially in the context of the soft expectations going in and the dismal report last quarter," said Todd Lowenstein, a portfolio manager at fund firm HighMark Capital. "Beating on revenue and earnings handily will boost confidence that the reorganization is pivoting them in the right direction."
As part of its reinvention as a 'devices and services' company, Microsoft now reports under two main groups, one covering its devices and consumer business, and one its commercial business.
The commercial side was the strongest in the quarter, posting a 10 percent increase in revenue, chiefly from selling Office and server software to businesses. The consumer and hardware group's revenue rose a more modest 4 percent, held back by another poor quarter for the Windows system as sales of personal computers continue to decline.
For the fiscal first quarter, Microsoft posted a 17 percent increase in profit to $5.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, up from $4.5 billion, or 53 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.
That topped Wall Street's average forecast of 54 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, although analysts had been edging down estimates for the last three months.
Revenue rose 16 percent to $18.5 billion, helped by rising sales of its Office software. Analysts had expected $17.8 billion, on average.
Its shares rose to $35.65 after hours, after closing at $33.72 on Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Richard Chang)
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