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Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Facebook initial public offering expected 'within hours'-Herald Sun
FACEBOOK is expected to file within hours to sell stock on the open market in what will be the most talked-about initial public offering since Google in 2004, maybe since the go-go 1990s.
Around the nation, regular investors and IPO watchers are anticipating some kind of twist - perhaps a provision for the 800 million users of Facebook, a company that promotes itself as all about personal connections, to get in on the action, which is expected as early as today.
"Pandemonium is what I expect in terms of demand for this stock," says Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, an advisory firm. "I don't think Wall Street would want to anger Facebook users."
The most successful young technology companies have a history of doing things differently.
Google's IPO prospectus contained a letter from its founders to investors that said the company believed in the motto "Don't be evil".
Facebook declined to comment, but Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor who has studied IPOs at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, believes Mark Zuckerberg will emulate Google's philosophy, at least in principle.
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted an IPO accessible to all investors, and said so in their first regulatory filing.
Facebook may say something similar when it files to declare its intention to sell stock publicly.
Facebook is expected to raise as much as $US10 billion ($A9.45 billion), which will value the company at $US75 billion to $US100 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs.
A stock usually starts trading three to four months after the filing.
The highly anticipated filing will reveal how much Facebook intends to raise from the stock market, what it plans to do with the money and details on its own financial performance and future growth prospects.
Along with Wall Street investment banks, Google used a Dutch auction, named for a means of selling flowers in Holland, to sell its shares. It took private bids and allowed investors to say how many shares they wanted and what they were willing to pay.
The process wasn't smooth, though, and Google had to slash its expected offer price at the last minute. If you bought at the IPO, for roughly $US85 a share, you still did well: Google closed today at $US580.
More recently, when it filed for an IPO last June, Groupon, which emails daily deals on products and services to its members, added a letter from its 30-year-old founder, Andrew Mason.
It's almost become conventional for tech companies to include an unconventional letter when they make their stock market debut. It's widely expected that Mr Zuckerberg, in the very least measure of showmanship, will write one.
But IPO watchers wonder whether there might be a provision specifically designed to give the little-guy investor, even the casual Facebook user who doesn't invest, a piece of the debut.
"There is a feeling that there will be something unique in store for Facebook users," Ms Aggarwal says.
When most companies go public, they let Wall Street investment banks handle everything, with the sweet ground-floor stock price reserved for big institutional investors.
But that probably won't do for Facebook, created in a Harvard University dorm room eight years ago.
Or Mr Zuckerberg, whose anti-establishment credentials include spurning a $US15 billion takeover offer from Microsoft.
Few expect Zuckerberg to offer a Dutch auction because of the Google experience. But he is at least as unorthodox as Google's founders.
People expect him to be in the driver's seat on Wall Street, rather than hand over the controls to bankers.
Ann Sherman, associate professor and IPO expert at DePaul University, raised the possibility that Facebook could set aside a portion of its shares for the small investor and use a lottery system if there is a lot of demand.
But Mr Zuckerberg will also probably be careful how he plays his cards. He doesn't want to anger Facebook users, but his primary goal is to raise money.
The recent experience of Groupon's faltering IPO holds tough lessons for young entrepreneurs.
After analysts started questioning its accounting, Groupon had to amend its regulatory filing several times.
Other companies have encountered problems when they went public and tried to reward customers.
Upstart internet phone company Vonage wanted to give customers a chance to buy up to 15 per cent of its 31 million shares at its IPO at $US17 apiece.
But when the shares fell 13 per cent on the first day of trading, many of its small investors that had put in orders to buy didn't want to pay the offer price.
It gained the dubious title of one of the worst IPOs that year, something Facebook wants to avoid. REF: "http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/facebook-initial-public-offering-expected-within-hours/story-e6frf7ko-1226259216780"
Around the nation, regular investors and IPO watchers are anticipating some kind of twist - perhaps a provision for the 800 million users of Facebook, a company that promotes itself as all about personal connections, to get in on the action, which is expected as early as today.
"Pandemonium is what I expect in terms of demand for this stock," says Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, an advisory firm. "I don't think Wall Street would want to anger Facebook users."
The most successful young technology companies have a history of doing things differently.
Google's IPO prospectus contained a letter from its founders to investors that said the company believed in the motto "Don't be evil".
Facebook declined to comment, but Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor who has studied IPOs at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, believes Mark Zuckerberg will emulate Google's philosophy, at least in principle.
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted an IPO accessible to all investors, and said so in their first regulatory filing.
Facebook may say something similar when it files to declare its intention to sell stock publicly.
Facebook is expected to raise as much as $US10 billion ($A9.45 billion), which will value the company at $US75 billion to $US100 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs.
A stock usually starts trading three to four months after the filing.
The highly anticipated filing will reveal how much Facebook intends to raise from the stock market, what it plans to do with the money and details on its own financial performance and future growth prospects.
Along with Wall Street investment banks, Google used a Dutch auction, named for a means of selling flowers in Holland, to sell its shares. It took private bids and allowed investors to say how many shares they wanted and what they were willing to pay.
The process wasn't smooth, though, and Google had to slash its expected offer price at the last minute. If you bought at the IPO, for roughly $US85 a share, you still did well: Google closed today at $US580.
More recently, when it filed for an IPO last June, Groupon, which emails daily deals on products and services to its members, added a letter from its 30-year-old founder, Andrew Mason.
It's almost become conventional for tech companies to include an unconventional letter when they make their stock market debut. It's widely expected that Mr Zuckerberg, in the very least measure of showmanship, will write one.
But IPO watchers wonder whether there might be a provision specifically designed to give the little-guy investor, even the casual Facebook user who doesn't invest, a piece of the debut.
"There is a feeling that there will be something unique in store for Facebook users," Ms Aggarwal says.
When most companies go public, they let Wall Street investment banks handle everything, with the sweet ground-floor stock price reserved for big institutional investors.
But that probably won't do for Facebook, created in a Harvard University dorm room eight years ago.
Or Mr Zuckerberg, whose anti-establishment credentials include spurning a $US15 billion takeover offer from Microsoft.
Few expect Zuckerberg to offer a Dutch auction because of the Google experience. But he is at least as unorthodox as Google's founders.
People expect him to be in the driver's seat on Wall Street, rather than hand over the controls to bankers.
Ann Sherman, associate professor and IPO expert at DePaul University, raised the possibility that Facebook could set aside a portion of its shares for the small investor and use a lottery system if there is a lot of demand.
But Mr Zuckerberg will also probably be careful how he plays his cards. He doesn't want to anger Facebook users, but his primary goal is to raise money.
The recent experience of Groupon's faltering IPO holds tough lessons for young entrepreneurs.
After analysts started questioning its accounting, Groupon had to amend its regulatory filing several times.
Other companies have encountered problems when they went public and tried to reward customers.
Upstart internet phone company Vonage wanted to give customers a chance to buy up to 15 per cent of its 31 million shares at its IPO at $US17 apiece.
But when the shares fell 13 per cent on the first day of trading, many of its small investors that had put in orders to buy didn't want to pay the offer price.
It gained the dubious title of one of the worst IPOs that year, something Facebook wants to avoid. REF: "http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/facebook-initial-public-offering-expected-within-hours/story-e6frf7ko-1226259216780"
Smallest extra solar planet discovered
The planet is believed to be composed of rock and water, and takes 20 hours to orbit its host star, the shortest orbital period of all exoplanets found so far. Astronomers infer its temperature over 1,000 degree Celsius, hot enough to make it covered in lava or superheated water vapour.
Most of the 330 or so exoplanets discovered so far are giant planets, primarily composed of gas, like Jupiter and Neptune. This new object, named CoRoT-Exo-7b, is very different, said an LESIA release.
"Finding such a small planet wasn't a complete surprise," said Daniel Rouan, from Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA) in Paris, who announced the discovery on Tuesday.
Alain Leger from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Marseille, leader of the discovery paper, explained: "It could be an example of a so-called ocean planet, whose existence was predicted some years ago. A Neptune-like planet, made of ice around a rocky core, drifts so close to its star, the ice melting to form a fluid envelope." Such small planets are extremely difficult to detect.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Health__Science/Science/Smallest_extra_solar_planet_discovered/articleshow/4074983.cms
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Africa the birthplace of human language, analysis suggests
ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2011) — Psychologists from The University of Auckland have just published two major studies on the diversity of the world's languages in the journals Science and Nature.
The first study, published in Science by Dr Quentin Atkinson, provides strong evidence for Africa as the birthplace of human language.
An analysis of languages from around the world suggests that, like our genes, human speech originated -- just once -- in sub-Saharan Africa. Atkinson studied the phonemes, or the perceptually distinct units of sound that differentiate words, used in 504 human languages today and found that the number of phonemes is highest in Africa and decreases with increasing distance from Africa.
The fewest phonemes are found in South America and on tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean. This pattern fits a "serial founder effect" model in which small populations on the edge of an expansion progressively lose diversity. Dr Atkinson notes that this pattern of phoneme usage around the world mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity, which also declined as humans expanded their range from Africa to colonise other regions.
In general, the areas of the globe that were most recently colonised incorporate fewer phonemes into the local languages whereas the areas that have hosted modern humans for millennia (particularly sub-Saharan Africa) still use the most phonemes.
This decline in phoneme usage cannot be explained by demographic shifts or other local factors, and it provides strong evidence for an African origin of modern human languages -- as well as parallel mechanisms that slowly shaped both genetic and linguistic diversity among humans.
The second study, published in Nature by University of Auckland researchers Professor Russell Gray and Dr Simon Greenhill and their colleagues Michael Dunn and Stephen Levinson at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands challenges the idea that the human brain produces universal rules for language.
"The diversity of the world's language is amazing," says Professor Gray. "There are about 7,000 languages spoken today, some with just a dozen contrastive sounds, others with more than 100, some with complex patterns of word formation, others with simple words only, some with the verb at the beginning of the sentence, some in the middle, and some at the end."
"Our work shows that the claims some linguists have made for a really strong role of the innate structure of the human mind in shaping linguistic variation have been hugely oversold," he says.
Using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology, Gray and his team analysed the global patterns of word-order evolution. Instead of universal patterns of dependencies in word-order features, they found that each language family had its own evolutionary tendencies.
"When it comes to language evolution, culture trumps cognition," Gray observes.
Africa the birthplace of human language, analysis suggests
The first study, published in Science by Dr Quentin Atkinson, provides strong evidence for Africa as the birthplace of human language.
An analysis of languages from around the world suggests that, like our genes, human speech originated -- just once -- in sub-Saharan Africa. Atkinson studied the phonemes, or the perceptually distinct units of sound that differentiate words, used in 504 human languages today and found that the number of phonemes is highest in Africa and decreases with increasing distance from Africa.
The fewest phonemes are found in South America and on tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean. This pattern fits a "serial founder effect" model in which small populations on the edge of an expansion progressively lose diversity. Dr Atkinson notes that this pattern of phoneme usage around the world mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity, which also declined as humans expanded their range from Africa to colonise other regions.
In general, the areas of the globe that were most recently colonised incorporate fewer phonemes into the local languages whereas the areas that have hosted modern humans for millennia (particularly sub-Saharan Africa) still use the most phonemes.
This decline in phoneme usage cannot be explained by demographic shifts or other local factors, and it provides strong evidence for an African origin of modern human languages -- as well as parallel mechanisms that slowly shaped both genetic and linguistic diversity among humans.
The second study, published in Nature by University of Auckland researchers Professor Russell Gray and Dr Simon Greenhill and their colleagues Michael Dunn and Stephen Levinson at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands challenges the idea that the human brain produces universal rules for language.
"The diversity of the world's language is amazing," says Professor Gray. "There are about 7,000 languages spoken today, some with just a dozen contrastive sounds, others with more than 100, some with complex patterns of word formation, others with simple words only, some with the verb at the beginning of the sentence, some in the middle, and some at the end."
"Our work shows that the claims some linguists have made for a really strong role of the innate structure of the human mind in shaping linguistic variation have been hugely oversold," he says.
Using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology, Gray and his team analysed the global patterns of word-order evolution. Instead of universal patterns of dependencies in word-order features, they found that each language family had its own evolutionary tendencies.
"When it comes to language evolution, culture trumps cognition," Gray observes.
Africa the birthplace of human language, analysis suggests
Lights and flat-panel displays: Researchers 'brighten' the future of organic light-emitting diode technology
ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2011) — Chlorine is an abundant and readily available halogen gas commonly associated with the sanitation of swimming pools and drinking water. Could a one-atom thick sheet of this element revolutionize the next generation of flat-panel displays and lighting technology?
In the case of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) devices, it most certainly can. Primary researchers Michael G. Helander (PhD Candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar), Zhibin Wang (PhD Candidate), and led by Professor Zheng-Hong Lu of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto, have found a simple method of using chlorine to drastically reduce traditional OLED device complexity and dramatically improve its efficiency all at the same time. By engineering a one-atom thick sheet of chlorine onto the surface of an existing industry-standard electrode material (indium tin oxide, ITO) found in today's flat-panel displays, these researchers have created a medium that allows for efficient electrical transport while eliminating the need for several costly layers found in traditional OLED devices.
"It turns out that it's remarkably easy to engineer this one-atom thick layer of chlorine onto the surface of ITO," says Helander. "We developed a UV light assisted process to achieve chlorination, which negates the need for chlorine gas, making the entire procedure safe and reliable."
The team tested their green-emitting "Cl-OLED" against a conventional OLED and found that the efficiency was more than doubled at very high brightness. "OLEDs are known for their high-efficiency," says Helander. "However, the challenge in conventional OLEDs is that as you increase the brightness, the efficiency drops off rapidly."
Using their chlorinated ITO, this team of advanced materials researchers found that they were able to prevent this drop off and achieve a record efficiency of 50% at 10,000 cd/m2 (a standard florescent light has a brightness of approximately 8,000 cd/m2), which is at least two times more efficient than the conventional OLED.
"Our Cl-ITO eliminates the need for several stacked layers found in traditional OLEDs, reducing the number of manufacturing steps and equipment, which ultimately cuts down on the costs associated with setting up a production line," says Professor Zheng-Hong Lu.
"This effectively lowers barriers for mass production and thereby accelerates the adoption of OLED devices into mainstream flat-panel displays and other lighting technologies."
The results of this work are published online in the journal Science on April 14, 2011.
Lights and flat-panel displays: Researchers 'brighten' the future of organic light-emitting diode technology
In the case of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) devices, it most certainly can. Primary researchers Michael G. Helander (PhD Candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar), Zhibin Wang (PhD Candidate), and led by Professor Zheng-Hong Lu of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto, have found a simple method of using chlorine to drastically reduce traditional OLED device complexity and dramatically improve its efficiency all at the same time. By engineering a one-atom thick sheet of chlorine onto the surface of an existing industry-standard electrode material (indium tin oxide, ITO) found in today's flat-panel displays, these researchers have created a medium that allows for efficient electrical transport while eliminating the need for several costly layers found in traditional OLED devices.
"It turns out that it's remarkably easy to engineer this one-atom thick layer of chlorine onto the surface of ITO," says Helander. "We developed a UV light assisted process to achieve chlorination, which negates the need for chlorine gas, making the entire procedure safe and reliable."
The team tested their green-emitting "Cl-OLED" against a conventional OLED and found that the efficiency was more than doubled at very high brightness. "OLEDs are known for their high-efficiency," says Helander. "However, the challenge in conventional OLEDs is that as you increase the brightness, the efficiency drops off rapidly."
Using their chlorinated ITO, this team of advanced materials researchers found that they were able to prevent this drop off and achieve a record efficiency of 50% at 10,000 cd/m2 (a standard florescent light has a brightness of approximately 8,000 cd/m2), which is at least two times more efficient than the conventional OLED.
"Our Cl-ITO eliminates the need for several stacked layers found in traditional OLEDs, reducing the number of manufacturing steps and equipment, which ultimately cuts down on the costs associated with setting up a production line," says Professor Zheng-Hong Lu.
"This effectively lowers barriers for mass production and thereby accelerates the adoption of OLED devices into mainstream flat-panel displays and other lighting technologies."
The results of this work are published online in the journal Science on April 14, 2011.
Lights and flat-panel displays: Researchers 'brighten' the future of organic light-emitting diode technology
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Soon, cell phones to be powered by conversations!
Tue, Sep 14 01:05 PM
Washington, Sep 14 (ANI): The more you talk, the longer your cell phone battery will last - that's the future scientists have predicted with a new technology that converts sound to electricity.
Scientists from Korea have turned the main ingredient of calamine lotion into a tiny material that converts sound waves into electricity, reports Discovery News.
The research could lead to panels that can charge a cell phone from a conversation or provide a boost of energy to the nation's electrical grid generated by the noise during rush hour traffic.
Using zinc oxide, the main ingredient in calamine lotion, Young Jun Park, Sang-Woo Kim and their colleagues created a field of nanowires sandwiched between two electrodes.
The researchers blasted that sandwich with sound waves, which at 100 decibels were not quite as loud as a rock concert. A normal conversation is about 60-70 decibels.
The sound waves produced a mild electrical current of about 50 millivolts. The average cell phone requires a few volts to operate, several times the power this technology can currently produce.
"Just as speakers transform electric signals into sound, the opposite process-of turning sound into a source of electrical power -- is possible," Discovery News quoted Young Jun Park and Sang-Woo Kim, the two corresponding authors of the new article, as saying.
"Sound power can be used for various novel applications including mobile phones that can be charged during conversations and sound-insulating walls near highways that generate electricity from the sound of passing vehicles," the co-authors added.
The study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials. (ANI)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100914/862/ttc-soon-cell-phones-to-be-powered-by-co_1.html
Washington, Sep 14 (ANI): The more you talk, the longer your cell phone battery will last - that's the future scientists have predicted with a new technology that converts sound to electricity.
Scientists from Korea have turned the main ingredient of calamine lotion into a tiny material that converts sound waves into electricity, reports Discovery News.
The research could lead to panels that can charge a cell phone from a conversation or provide a boost of energy to the nation's electrical grid generated by the noise during rush hour traffic.
Using zinc oxide, the main ingredient in calamine lotion, Young Jun Park, Sang-Woo Kim and their colleagues created a field of nanowires sandwiched between two electrodes.
The researchers blasted that sandwich with sound waves, which at 100 decibels were not quite as loud as a rock concert. A normal conversation is about 60-70 decibels.
The sound waves produced a mild electrical current of about 50 millivolts. The average cell phone requires a few volts to operate, several times the power this technology can currently produce.
"Just as speakers transform electric signals into sound, the opposite process-of turning sound into a source of electrical power -- is possible," Discovery News quoted Young Jun Park and Sang-Woo Kim, the two corresponding authors of the new article, as saying.
"Sound power can be used for various novel applications including mobile phones that can be charged during conversations and sound-insulating walls near highways that generate electricity from the sound of passing vehicles," the co-authors added.
The study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials. (ANI)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100914/862/ttc-soon-cell-phones-to-be-powered-by-co_1.html
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