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Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA —An analysis of melatonin studies has upheld the controversial supplement’s effectiveness as a sleep aid.

The analysis, which included 17 peer-reviewed scientific papers, was aimed at determining whether supplements of the hormone can improve sleep among insomniacs, older adults and others.

“A meta-analysis essentially tells ‘yes’ or ‘no’—that a treatment does or does not have a significant effect,” says Richard Wurtman of MIT, the study’s principal investigator. “When a meta-analysis says ‘yes,’ there should no longer be any controversy about whether the treatment works.”

Previous studies by Wurtman and colleagues showed that small doses of melatonin, about 0.3 milligrams, are necessary for restful effects. The researchers found, however, that commercially available melatonin pills can contain 10 times the effective amount.

At that dose, says Wurtman, the hormone’s effects end after a few days because melatonin receptors in the brain become unresponsive when exposed to too much of the hormone.

Such inadvertent overdosing, say the researchers, has contributed to controversy over melatonin’s efficacy.

But the new meta-analysis shows that melatonin does indeed have positive effects on sleep—even though some of the analyzed studies also involved high doses of the hormone.

The research is reported in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

US-based Oracle Corporation announced earlier today that they are buying rival US-based Siebel Systems for $10.66 USD per share. Siebel shareholders have the option to receive the $10.66 per share in cash or in Oracle stock. This deal is valued at approximately $5.85 billion USD. Siebel Systems’ Board of Directors has already voted in favour of the acquisition. Founder Thomas Siebel has also given his support. A special meeting will soon be held for Siebel stockholders to vote on the acquisition. If all goes well the deal should close in the early part of next year.

After acquiring Siebel; Oracle, which specializes in database applications, will become the second largest software company. Oracle has offices in more than 145 countries, and employs over 50,000 people. This acquisition will make Oracle the largest customer relationship management (CRM) applications company in the world. CRM applications include accounting, inventory management and customer management software. “Siebel’s 4,000 applications customers and 3,400,000 CRM users strengthen our number one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally”, said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman and Founder of Siebel Systems. Many analysts predicted the acquisition of Siebel after Oracle bought competitor PeopleSoft for $10 billion USD, last December.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The bestselling US novelist Tom Clancy died yesterday in a hospital in Baltimore, according to his publisher. The sixty-six year old is best known for a series of novels themed around espionage, military affairs and geopolitical intrigue, many of which have been adapted into movies and video games.

The Hunt for Red October, Clancy’s first novel, sold over five million copies and was made into a movie with Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery. President Ronald Reagan described the novel as a “perfect yarn”. The protagonist of Red October, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, starred in a series of Clancy adventures featuring wars, terrorist attacks and international political power games. Ryan has been played by Harrison Ford and later Ben Affleck.

Seventeen of his twenty novels have reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. In 2002, Forbes magazine estimated Clancy’s earnings at US$47.8m. His final novel, Command Authority, is to be published in December.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

In the biggest ever narcotics haul in India’s capital, the New Delhi police have seized over 4,400 kg of Mandrax and Rs. 20 crore from a dealer in the city. The consignment, meant for a customer in the U.S, was seized from a godown in Badarpur, near the Delhi-Haryana border. The alleged trafficker, identified as Vinod Sharma, claimed that the contraband was not his and that he had nothing to do with the matter. Sharma started his career as a scrap-dealer in Delhi, and police suspect that with the help of some contacts he used container depots for drug-trafficking, whilst successfully dodging both the police and the Customs Department.

On Sunday the Delhi Police arrested him at his Kalkaji residence. The Deputy Commissioner of Police for South District, Delhi Police, Anil Shukla said, “Sharma befriended container drivers and once they had driven past customs, he and his men would meet them at a distance and pilfer the containers.”

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last December, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

According to the association, existing home sales fell 16.7% last month, to an annual rate of 5.45 million, the largest crash since 1968. The figure was less than the 5.90 million units, or an eleven percent drop, predicted by most analysts.

Sales of homes went up for the entire of 2009 to 5.156 million units, or 4.9% for the year, and prices dropped from 2008 by 12.4%.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun described the figures as being “probably the largest annual drop since the Great Depression”. He said that “the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit. We’re likely to have another surge in the spring. Job creation is the key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”

Pierre Ellis, a senior economist for Decision Economics in New York, commented on the figures, saying: “The drop in home sales is the payback for the acceleration of sales that occurred with the original first-time home buyers tax credit. […] There is an issue as to whether the decline represents a fundamental weakening.”

“The housing market continues to face significant headwinds, including high unemployment, record delinquencies and foreclosures, the specter of rising mortgage rates as the Fed’s [mortgage-backed securities] purchase programs comes to a close in late March, and tight credit,” Omair Sharif, an economist for RBS Securities, noted.

“Still, the resale market showed resilience in the second half of 2009, and the expansion and extension of the tax credit to April 30 could boost purchases during the spring selling season,” he said.

“We’ll see a pickup in existing home sales in the next couple of months as people take advantage of the tax-credit extension”, economist Adam York of Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina claimed. He fore-casted a pace of 5.4 million. He said that there were unlikely to be buyers of homes, despite the fact that the U.S. was “past the bottom.”

All four regions of the country saw a decline in sales. In the Northeast, sales fell 19.5 percent, in the Midwest, they plunged 25.8 percent. The South, the country’s largest region, saw a 16.3% decline, while in the West, sales waned by 4.8%.

US stocks fell slightly after the announcement, but went back up later in the day.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Nine people were killed on Thursday by 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. By various reports seven or nine people were also injured. Officials said Mercer killed himself during the subsequent shootout with police.

Mercer began the killing spree in a class where he was a student by shooting the class teacher, and killed eight students in that and at least one other classroom. In the next classroom, a student nurse unsuccessfully tried to save the life of her friend who was wounded by the gunman. Another student, ex-soldier Chris Mintz, was shot seven times after coming to help.

The reasons for the attack are not known but CNN reports he singled out people who identified themselves as Christian. The BBC noted Mercer may have revealed his plans via social media and possibly left a written statement. He briefly served in the US Army in 2008.

An ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent said authorities found six weapons at the college and a further seven weapons from the gunman’s home, including a shotgun, all of which appear to have been obtained lawfully by Mercer and members of his family. State laws permit people to carry concealed weapons in higher education institutions and at least one other person at the college was armed. Oregon recently passed a new gun law in response to a shooting incident in 2012, in which a man used a stolen rifle to murder two other people in a Portland shopping center.

Later on Thursday, President Barack Obama spoke for twelve minutes about the incident and called for stricter gun controls in line with other countries like Australia and the United Kingdom. Referring to earlier similar shootings, he said “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it. We have become numb to this”. This is reportedly the fifteenth occasion Obama has spoken out after such a killing spree. He expressed his belief that there would soon be a “press release” from the pro-gun lobby, who would call for a reduction of gun controls. He also predicted there would be criticism levelled at him about his politicization of the matter, but he said “this is something we should politicize.” Although no new initiative was outlined, Obama highlighted Congressional opposition which had stopped “the collection of data on shooting incidents” and stated “this is not something I can do myself.”

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Sunday, April 8, 2012

According to press releases from the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), Unit 2 of the Penly Nuclear Power Plant in France shut down Thursday afternoon after operators were alerted to “small quantities of burning oil.” The plant is operated by Électricité de France (EDF). Emergency crews were dispatched to the 1,330-megawatt French reactor following an alarm triggered there at 11:20 UTC Thursday. According to EDF, there were “no consequences for the environment” and no one was injured.

The ASN said in a statement the anomaly had been provisionally placed at level 1 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which ranks occurrences at nuclear power plants on a scale ranging from 1 to 7, with 7 representing an event with lasting consequences for health and the environment such as the Fukushima Daiichi disaster following a Tsunami in Japan in March 2011.

The alarm was triggered after two fires broke out in the reactor building. The fires are reported to have been caused by leaks in one of the cooling pumps that are part of the reactor’s cooling system. The source of the fire was determined to be one or more pools of oil which had leaked from one of a pump’s joints, catching fire. They were quickly suppressed and the reactor remains shut down due to damage to the cooling pump.

After the fires were put out, radioactive water was then discovered to be leaking from the pump into the reactor’s drainage bin.The ASN released a statement at 05:00 UTC saying they had received “confirmation by EDF that the leak in the primary pump n°1 of the reactor n°2 at the Penly NPP had stopped.” ASN has undertaken an investigation into the causes of the incident which will later be published on their website. The reactor will remain shut down until the damage is repaired and the cause of the incident is known.

The Penly nuclear site, located on the coast to the northwest of Paris, is home to two Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) units and is cooled using water from the English Channel. PWRs are a common variety of nuclear reactors named for their use of highly pressurized water in their primary cooling systems. All of the 58 nuclear power plants which supply France with over 75% of its energy, are of this type.