Startup has skin in the game

A Colombian company offering new hope to burn victims and other patients who suffer skin tissue loss is one of the 26 MassChallenge top finalists who'll compete on Oct. 30 for a piece of the start-up accelerator's $1.5 million in cash prizes.

Keraderm was founded in Bogota in 2010 by a group of plastic surgeons, who set out to find an affordable, painless way of treating tissue loss resulting from burns, ulcers, tumors and trauma.

The typical treatment calls for a graft to be taken from a patient's healthy skin and meshed to cover a large wound — a surgical procedure that often results in severe pain, significant scarring and, sometimes, rejection by the patient's body.

But Keraderm's team found that by taking a sample of healthy skin less than one centimeter in diameter from behind a patient's ear, within five to seven days they could reproduce the skin cells and plant them on a collagen sheet four times the size of a business card to cover the wound, said Jorge Soto, the company's chief financial officer.

"It starts to heal the injury by accelerating the growth of healthy skin cells," Soto said. "In 20 to 40 days, the wound is completely healed."

The patent-pending procedure, which eliminates the need for an operating room and anesthesia as well as the possibility of rejection, has been successfully done on more than 100 patients so far in 11 different hospitals in Colombia and entails no pain or scarring, he said.

A 10-by-10-centimeter sheet of skin also costs $550, significantly less than a skin graft operation does.

"There are other variations of what we're doing," Soto said, "but we haven't been able to find anyone doing the same thing."

Keraderm hopes to expand the procedure in Latin America before bringing it to the United States, where it would need to be tested in a clinical trial to gain regulatory approval.

That's a process that would take the kind of money the company, which has only eight employees including Soto, does not yet have, he said.

The team bootstrapped the start-up with $50,000 and in 2012 raised an additional $300,000 from angel investors, allowing it to open a lab in Bogota that June, Soto said.

But even if Keraderm doesn't win any money in MassChallenge, he said, the four-month accelerator, for which they were selected out of a field of nearly 1,200 applicants, has been worth it.

"I never even thought I was going to be here," Soto said. "It's going to help me a lot to show we have a product that is working."

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

RI sales tax panel to hear from Boston researcher

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A special task force examining ways to change Rhode Island's sales tax is set to hear from a Boston-based researcher who studies how sales taxes affect the economy.

The sales tax commission is scheduled to meet Monday at the Statehouse for a presentation from Paul Bachman, director of research at the Beacon Hill Institute, which is a research group affiliated with Suffolk University in Boston.

Bachman has studied how changes to sales tax rates affect local economies.

The commission was formed after a lawmaker called for the repeal of the 7 percent tax. While that idea is unlikely to pass, lawmakers say it's time for a broader look at ways to make the tax less of a burden on consumers and businesses.

The commission includes lawmakers and business owners.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

ABC and Univision's love child bursts to life

MIAMI — The long-awaited DNA exchange between ABC and Univision emerges from the test tube this month, aiming to stretch the limits of traditional network programming. The English-language television network, called Fusion, will target millennial Hispanics and their BFFs as it attempts to capitalize on a generation for which cultural fusion is the norm and digital media is king.

The network will provide something of a grab bag: a mix of hard news, commentary, sports and irreverence aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds. Sure, there will be nightly news programs, but also an animated puppet news and entertainment show by David Javerbaum, former head writer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Think Comedy Central, the hipster online magazine Vice.com, ABC and Univision, all in one.

"Not everyone will get it; and that's sort of the point," Univision News President and now Fusion CEO Isaac Lee wrote in a memo to staff earlier this month.

To "get" what Fusion is attempting, it helps to tour its home and meet the players:

THE STARTUP

The green and blue mood-lighting of the warehouse-turned-news hub known as Newsport suggests Miami Beach club over newsroom. Like millennials who can't afford to move out on their own, Fusion shares the cavernous space with Spanish-language parent Univision News. Senior staff members gather for brainstorming sessions in brightly painted and glass-walled rooms overlooking the newsroom.

On a recent afternoon, Lee strode across the floor like the head of a Silicon Valley startup, sketching flow charts of Fusion's evolution. As he talked, one millennial staffer wrestled a ping pong ball from the mouth of Chocolate, Lee's brown Labrador. Others chimed in on the essence of the network that goes live Oct. 28.

As befits a project geared to a generation used to downloading the latest mobile update, Fusion has been beta testing in plain view. In 2011, Lee brought together a group of recent journalism school graduates to work on an English-language Tumblr for Univision. The young journalists created original news, curated stories and produced short documentaries.

Lee learned what worked (humor) and what didn't (direct Univision translations). The approach bought him time to win over holdouts at Univision, a company that built its brand on Spanish-language affinity.

THE PROS

"I hate ties. They are really useless. Why do I have to have a piece of cloth hanging from my neck every day?" fumed Jorge Ramos, the silver-haired veteran Univision anchor with piercing blue eyes, one of a handful of senior journalists to join Fusion.

As Ramos jogged up the stairs, he yanked the offending garment out of his bag and held it up to his neck. "This is my Univision uniform," he said, then dropped his arm and grinned, "and this is Fusion."

Ramos, who co-hosts Univision's popular nightly newscast with Maria Elena Salinas, will pull double duty. He frankly acknowledges his own millennial kids don't watch his Univision newscast, or any other. He is also blunt about the limits of his native language.

"It is very frustrating many times to have a great interview on the Sunday news story, and no one (in Washington) is paying attention simply because it's in Spanish," he said.

Ramos doesn't plan to dumb things down. He does plan to mention Mexico — the country sharing 2,000 miles of the United States' southern border — almost as much as he mentions Syria. One of his first interviews is with Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who earned attention and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation for his aggressive attempts to crack down on illegal immigration.

THE FEMALE FACTOR

Alicia Menendez describes her new Fusion show as a mix of sex, money and politics.

Isn't everything?

"Yes, but most people won't admit it," Menendez shot back. The 30-year-old gained early exposure to politics as the daughter of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. She's anchored programs for HuffPost Live and Sirius XM but says Fusion is the first network to speak to her generation.

Her first show: millennials' lack of monogamy and how self-inflicted singledom affects home purchasing.

Fusion describes itself as "Championing a smart, diverse and inclusive America." But Menendez's show notwithstanding, when it comes to gender, Fusion resembles Silicon Valley startups more than its tagline: it's stocked with talented women on the news floor but has virtually none on its senior creative and executive team.

THE PARTNERSHIP

ABC News President Ben Sherwood compares Fusion to the web of highways California built back in the 1950s.

"No one could understand why you would build a freeway with six lanes. But the visionaries of California knew that if you built these freeways, people would come," he said.

Like California's freeway system, the plan is to scale up, starting with 20 million homes and expanding to 60 million in the next few years.

It was a logical move for the Disney-owned ABC, which has no cable news counterpart and provides Fusion broad distribution through its cable and satellite contracts. It can also share news content with minimal investment. ABC has sent staff to work with Fusion on content and production, and Fusion's vice-president of news Mark Lima came from ABC's "Nightline."

For Univision, Fusion poses a greater risk, but the company has the financial wherewithal to weather initial bumps. Its prime-time broadcasts ruled July sweeps ahead of the other four major networks among coveted 19-49 viewers. In Fusion, it's looking ahead to the second- and third-generation Latinos who get their news in English. Nearly two-thirds of the 52 million Hispanics living in the U.S. are native born.

Still, the experiment hasn't been without awkward moments. As Fusion prepared to go live, top staffers were quoted sniping about the ages of their older counterparts at Univision.

THE COMPETITION

Fusion has competitors. Participant Media launched Pivot TV this summer, promoting social advocacy among millennials. Sean Combs' new music focused Revolt TV debut's this month.

Still, Morley Winograd, a University of Southern California fellow and author of books on media and millennials, says Fusion has the right ingredients for success and a huge potential market for advertisers.

"The two earliest cable channels specifically targeted at millennials were the ABC Family Channel and the Disney Channel," Winograd said. "It's not surprising then that a 'Fusion' of Univision and ABC decided upon Latino millennials as their market. Each side of the partnership knows a great deal about one half of that audience combination."

Lee insists Fusion will take some time to find its footing. MSNBC took years to settle on its left-of-center brand. Fox News Channel wasn't the nation's most popular cable news network out of the gate.

"Nobody's doing what we are doing," he said, "so there's one way to find out what works and what doesn't."

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

Growing Cape OysterFest charges fee for first time

WELLFLEET, Mass — The Wellfleet OysterFest has a new feature this year that might be unwelcome: People have to pay to get in.

The Cape Cod Times reports (http://bit.ly/1atTl36) that for the first time ever people will be charged to get into the festival Saturday and Sunday. The cost for anyone over 12 is $5 or $8 for a two-day pass.

The festival manager says the money will help improve safety and support future festivals.

The Wellfleet OysterFest started as a small hometown event in 2002, but it's grown over the years, along with the costs for sanitation, insurance and paid staff. Attendance recently reached 25,000 over its two-day span, a size that the Times reports has turned off some locals.

The event is sponsored by the Shellfish Promotion and Tasting nonprofit in Wellfleet.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

British judge clears Madoff sons of wrongdoing

LONDON — A British judge has cleared Bernard Madoff's sons of wrongdoing in a case brought against them by the liquidator of his estate in Britain, saying in a written ruling that the pair's honesty was not in doubt.

Judge Andrew Popplewell said Friday that the brothers, Mark and Andrew, were among several U.K. directors of Bernard Madoff's London-based securities firm whose reputations had been tainted by association with the elder Madoff's multibillion-dollar fraud. In dismissing the civil case against them all, the judge delivered a glowing endorsement of their character.

"Their honesty and integrity has been vindicated," he said.

Mark and Andrew Madoff long played a lead role in the drama surrounding their disgraced financier father. They first alerted authorities in 2008 after the elder Madoff confessed that his highly regarded investment business was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.

The pair held their silence as the details of the breathtaking fraud spilled out into the public domain, but following Mark's suicide in 2010 — and ahead of the release of a book telling the Madoff family's side of the story — Andrew spoke to the press, saying the Madoff family had been completely hoodwinked by his father.

"What he did to me, to my brother, and to my family is unforgivable," Andrew Madoff said at the time.

Nevertheless, suspicion has lingered, and a lawsuit filed in London's High Court against the Madoff brothers and various company directors alleged that they subverted the company's finances by approving $27 million in payments, more than 5 million euros ($6.8 million) in perks, and millions more in interest parceled out to well-connected Austrian businesswoman Sonja Kohn, who had helped the elder Madoff win billions in new business.

Judge Popplewell ruled that the Madoff brothers and another director, Philip Toop, "were in breach of their duty to exercise reasonable skill and care" by failing to investigate whether the payments were in the company's best interests. But Popplewell said that the payments would most likely have been made in any case, and in general his judgment was a big win for the defense.

"The resolute and temperate way they have conducted themselves in these proceedings does them great credit," he said.

Other legal actions — including a criminal trial in New York involving a different set of defendants — are ongoing.

The judge said Andrew Madoff was "seriously ill with cancer" and so sick he had been unable to give evidence, even via videolink.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

Calif. finds more instances of offshore fracking

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The oil production technique known as fracking has been occurring on offshore platforms and man-made islands off some of Southern California's most populous coastal communities.

Interviews and drilling records obtained by The Associated Press show fracking has occurred at least 200 times over the past two decades in waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach.

Though there is no evidence offshore hydraulic fracturing has led to any spills or chemical leaks, the practice occurs with little state or federal oversight of the operations

The state agency that leases lands and waters to oil companies says officials found new instances of fracking after searching records as part of a review after the AP reported this summer about fracking in federal waters of California.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

Shutdown coverage benefits cable news networks

NEW YORK — The federal government shutdown damaged the reputations of Washington politicians but proved good business for the cable television news networks — and taught some reporters new benefits of virtually instant communications.

CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw their viewership increase during the 16-day partial shutdown, peaking at more than five million Wednesday evening when Congress passed a compromise bill to put the government back online.

"It was a drama," said CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash, who logged many hours of airtime along with Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News and Mike Emanuel of Fox. "Whenever there's a drama, people are interested."

MSNBC, which has struggled in this post-election year, saw its average prime-time viewership jump 35 percent to 978,000 this month through Wednesday, compared to the first nine months of the year, the Nielsen company said. Fox, which chose not to make any of its reporters available for this story, was up 9 percent to 2.22 million in the same period (although the network also benefited from a prime-time schedule change this month). CNN improved by 11 percent to 721,000.

The news networks brought their traditional hallmarks of crisis coverage to the political machinations, including "countdown clocks" that marked each second closer to a debt limit deadline. The story meant brutal hours: O'Donnell, who filed for MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News, was at work past 3 a.m. Eastern the first night of the shutdown, then back at 6 a.m. for "Morning Joe."

There were many strong points to the coverage, particularly when reporters didn't fall back on cliches like declaring winners and losers for an event that did few people proud, said Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University.

"It certainly gave voice to the American people disgusted over this and there were a number of good stories about the impact of the shutdown on government workers," Hall said.

Social media was a big help, O'Donnell said. She would hear from people outside the Capitol cocoon through Twitter and email, with many raising questions she used in her reporting. She was asked how the shutdown would affect Social Security or back pay for government workers. NBC used a "dearcongress" hashtag on Twitter to encourage questions.

Sometimes the concerns were very specific, like when shrimp fishermen asked about access to launches on federal land, which she took to an individual congressman in the affected area.

"That was a real-time experience of the shutdown that did not compare to anything in a crisis that we had covered before," O'Donnell said.

In the past, Bash said she'd often need to plead with producers for time off the air to report. In this case, it wasn't really necessary: Her sources would text, tweet or email information while she was on the air. When President Barack Obama spoke to the nation on Thursday, Bash had instant reaction from several Republicans minutes after he left the podium.

When Republicans and Democrats weren't talking to each other, Bash found that they would talk through her.

"I'll report something or I'll tweet something and I'll get a call from a source pushing back or trying to shape it — not because it's a message to the world, but because it's a message to the other side," she said.

Bash would set up live shots in the hallway between Speaker John Boehner's office and the floor of the House of Representatives, a passageway teeming with sources.

Even though TV reporters love few things more than airtime, by the end even that was wearing off.

"There's always a rush in covering a big story," Bash said. "But at a certain point, you want your government to work a little better, regardless of what you do for a living."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder@ap.org or on Twitter@dbauder. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/david-bauder.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

AP CEO: Press freedom v. security a 'false choice'

DENVER — Governments that try to force citizens to decide between a free press and national security create a "false choice" that weakens democracy, and journalists must fight increasing government overreach that has had a chilling effect on efforts to hold leaders accountable, the president and CEO of The Associated Press said Saturday.

Gary Pruitt told the 69th General Assembly of the Inter American Press Association that the U.S. Justice Department's secret seizure of records of thousands of telephone calls to and from AP reporters in 2012 is one of the most blatant violations of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution the 167-year-old news cooperative has ever encountered.

The Justice Department action involving the AP resonated far beyond the U.S., including Latin America, where journalists for decades have fought to exercise press freedoms under authoritarian regimes, Pruitt said.

"The actions by the Department of Justice could not have been more tailor-made to comfort authoritarian regimes who want to suppress the news media. 'The United States does it too,' they can say," Pruitt said.

A free and independent press "differentiates democracy from dictatorship; separates a free society from tyranny," he said.

"Governments who try to set up a situation where citizens think they must choose between a free press and security are making a mistake that will ultimately weaken them, not strengthen them. It's not a real choice. It is a false choice."

Pruitt said he was encouraged by proposed Justice Department guidelines, introduced after the records seizure, that would give news media advance notice of subpoenas so the press can challenge those actions in court; protect not just phone records but reporters' email, text messages and other forms of electronic communication; and guarantee that journalists won't be prosecuted for doing their jobs.

"But you can bet that we will be watching closely to make sure they are implemented and enforced," Pruitt said.

In 2012, the Justice Department secretly obtained records of work, cell and home numbers of AP journalists, as well as AP bureau numbers in New York, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Conn., and the AP number in the U.S. House of Representatives press gallery. It did so after an Associated Press story revealed the foiling of a plot in Yemen to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner at a time the Barack Obama administration was insisting publicly that it had no information about terrorist organizations plotting attacks on the United States in that period.

The Justice Department was trying to identify who leaked information for the AP story — but it didn't tell the AP about its phone records seizure until a year after the story ran.

The seizure was "hardly a surgical strike on a few carefully chosen targets. It was overbroad, sloppy and a fishing expedition into a wide spectrum of AP news journalism and journalists — most of whom had nothing to do with the issues in question here," Pruitt said.

It also differed from the National Security Agency's broad monitoring of global communications because it was specifically directed at locating the source of AP's reporting.

Just as alarming, the seizure has intimidated both official and nonofficial sources from speaking to the AP and numerous other news organizations, even about stories not related to national security, Pruitt said.

"Now, the government may love this. I think they do. But beware a government that loves secrecy too much," he said.

And the challenge isn't going away, Pruitt said.

"The attack on journalism — here in the United States and throughout the rest of the world — is not going to cease any time soon. In fact, I think it will become even more difficult to counter as technology gives governments very powerful tools to monitor the actions and communications of citizens and journalists," he said.

The Miami-based Inter American Press Association has about 1,400 member news organizations and promotes press freedoms throughout the Americas.

___

English URL: www.ap.org/content/press-release/2013/the-free-press-vs-national-security-a-false-choice

Spanish URL: www.ap.org/content/press-release/2013/libertad-de-prensa-vs-seguridad-nacional-un-falso-dilema

Portuguese URL: www.ap.org/content/press-release/2013/imprensa-livre-vs-seguranca-nacional-a-falsa-escolha

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

Massport to hit up pols

Massachusetts Port Authority officials — already facing a ticking clock to grab vital federal funding — are prepping to start a Beacon Hill blitz this week to pitch a $300 million plan to dredge Boston Harbor, hoping to convince lawmakers to bankroll nearly a quarter of it.

The four-year project to deepen the Hub's vital maritime channels could double the amount of cargo containers that pass through Boston Harbor — a 
$42.5 million business for Massport last year — and will help it vie for the bigger cargo ships primed to hit East Coast ports starting in 2015, officials say.

But they admit they're already playing catch-up to other ports' dredging projects, making lobbying efforts — both federally and at the state level — crucial to keeping them competitive.

"We want to make sure we're putting our best foot forward and make the case for federal funding, and make the case for state funding. But it's kind of a chicken-and-egg process," Massport CEO Thomas Glynn said, noting the board has yet to vote on the project but could within four months. "We have to tell the board, then we have to go to the State House, so we kind of go back and forth."

Their first targets are East Boston lawmakers, whose sometimes prickly history with the agency mean Massport pitches always require a grain of salt, said Eastie state Rep. Carlo Basile.

"I just don't take their word for it. I do my own due diligence," said Basile, who plans to meet with Massport officials Tuesday. He admitted he's aware of little to no complaints from past dredging projects rolled out in 2001, 2005 and 2008, but warned, "that's not to say it can't happen this time."

"It's a much bigger project," Basile said. "I'm still waiting to hear a lot of details."

Massport spokesman Matthew Brelis, said, "We talk with legislators all the time on a host of things," but noted for the dredging project officials are starting with lawmakers from "impacted communities" before moving on to others.

Massport officials are counting on as much as 
$170 million in federal money for the project, with $65 million each coming from the agency and the state.

Secretary of Transportation Richard Davey, who chairs the Massport board, implored members that "we shouldn't do anything right now that would preclude us from the $170 million," likening the shot at the federal funds to waiting for Halley's Comet.

"You can call it Davey's Comet," he told the board during a Thursday meeting.

When Congress will act to award the money, however, is unclear, especially in the wake of the government shutdown, Glynn said.

"Everything is up for grabs down there until it's final," he said. "(Other ports) are a little bit ahead of us in terms of making their request ... but we have enough time. It's a question of it's a moving target."

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More

What to do when battery is on its last legs

I have a 2005 Hyundai Tucson with 90,000 miles on it. I've never had a problem since I purchased the vehicle, but I'm worried the battery will fail sometime soon because of its age. I'm planning to change the battery myself but I'm concerned about the computer and electronics due to the temporary loss of power during the replacement process. What should I do before and after changing the battery?

Just drive the car. Replacing the battery, which of course requires disconnecting the vehicle's electrical system from the original battery, will do no harm to the vehicle's electronics. You'll likely have to reset the radio station pre-sets and the engine management system will take a few miles of driving to "re-learn" your driving characteristics, but you probably will not notice anything.

Perhaps the more relevant question at this point is: Should you replace the battery now or wait until it fails? Being a founding member of the "Snug America" club and not wanting to part with any more of my hard-earned dollars than absolutely necessary, I lean toward the latter. Most batteries will develop symptoms of impending failure such as slow engine cranking speeds, giving you a heads-up that it's time for a new one. But batteries can and do fail suddenly and completely without warning.

So when I suspect a battery might be on its last legs, I carry a portable battery booster in the vehicle. Then, if the battery does fail, — at any time and for any reason — I can jump-start the vehicle to complete my trip.

This, by definition, is the Murphy's Law of automobiles — if you have a spare part with you, you'll probably never need to use it!

And finally, to put your mind at ease, have the original battery tested at a local parts store. A load test or electronic test will give you an idea of how much life your battery still has.

I have a '93 Buick Riviera with the 3800 V6 engine and 182,000 miles. When I start the engine it makes a "thudding" noise four to five times. It has done this intermittently for the past three years. One mechanic told me it could be a cracked flywheel. Can you help?

Does this noise primarily occur on a cold start after the car's been sitting for at least several hours? Also, watch the oil pressure warning light carefully as you start the engine — do the "thuds" last precisely until the warning light goes out? If so, the noise may be due to worn main or rod bearings. Once oil pressure is up, the excess clearance is buffered by the oil film and the noise stops.

A cracked flex plate/flywheel or loose torque converter mounting bolts could cause a similar noise, but for three years without some type of failure? Other possibilities include a broken or failed engine/drivetrain mount or an engine startup misfire.

Regardless of the cause, at 20 years old and nearing 200,000 miles, I'm not sure I'd be willing to spend much on repairs. If the vehicle is still nice, keep an eye out for a used or rebuilt engine. Remember the automotive version of Murphy's Law.

We have a 2008 Buick Lucerne. This fall we will be leaving the state for about seven months. Should we disconnect the battery? Will this mess up the computers? Also, should I use a trickle charger or a float charger? What's the difference?

I recommend disconnecting the battery — it is safer and will cause no harm as described above — and connect a float charger or battery maintainer like Battery Tender to keep the battery safely charged while you're away.

A trickle charger continuously charges the battery at a low amperage rate, which can lead to overcharging and battery failure. A battery maintainer charges and holds the battery at its optimum voltage safely for an indefinite period.

23.40 | 0 komentar | Read More