IBM researchers unveil TrueNorth, a new computer architecture that imitates how a brain works

By Aviva Hope Rutkin

To create a computer as powerful as the human brain, perhaps we first need to build one that works more like a brain. Today, at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Dallas, IBM researchers will unveil a radically new computer architecture designed to bring that goal within reach. Using simulations of enormous complexity, they show that the architecture, named TrueNorth, could lead to a new generation of machines that function more like biological brains.

The announcement builds on IBM’s ongoing projects in cognitive computing. In 2011, the research team released computer chips that use a network of “neurosynaptic cores” to manage information in a way that resembles the functioning of neurons in a brain (see “IBM’s New Chips Compute More Like We Do”). With TrueNorth, the researchers demonstrate a way to use those chips for specific tasks, and they show that the approach could be used to build, among other things, a more efficient biologically inspired visual sensor.

“It doesn’t make sense to take a programming language from the previous era and try to adapt it to a new architecture. It’s like a square peg in a round hole,” said Dharmendra Modha, lead researcher. “You have to rethink the very notion of what programming means.”

In a series of three papers released today, Modha’s team details the TrueNorth system and its possible applications.

Most modern computer systems are built on the Von Neumann architecture—with separate units for storing information and processing it sequentially—and they use programming languages designed specifically for that architecture. Instead, TrueNorth stores and processes information in a distributed, parallel way, like the neurons and synapses in a brain.

Modha’s team has also developed software that runs on a conventional supercomputer but simulates the functioning of a massive network of neurosynaptic cores—with 100 trillion virtual synapses and two billion neurosynaptic cores.

Each core of the simulated neurosynaptic computer contains its own network of 256 “neurons,” which operate using a new mathematical model. In this model, the digital neurons mimic the independent nature of biological neurons, developing different response times and firing patterns in response to input from neighboring neurons.

“Programs” are written using special blueprints called corelets. Each corelet specifies the basic functioning of a network of neurosynaptic cores. Individual corelets can be linked into more and more complex structures—nested, Modha says, “like Russian dolls.”

TrueNorth comes with a library of 150 pre-designed corelets, each for a particular task. One corelet can detect motion, for example, while another can sort images by color. Also included with TrueNorth is a curriculum to help academics and, eventually, customers learn to use the system.

Karlheinz Meie, co-director of the European Union’s Human Brain Project, says that untraditional computing architectures like TrueNorth aren’t meant as a replacement for existing devices but as gateways into entirely new markets for technology. They might, for example, be used to solve some problems involving big data that the traditional Von Neumann approach cannot untangle.

“If you look at which architecture can already [solve these problems] today, it’s the brain,” says Meier. “We learn from data. We do not have predetermined algorithms. We are able to make predictions and causal relationships even in situations we have never seen before.”

For example, the researchers hope to use TrueNorth to develop systems as powerful as human vision. The brain sorts through more than one terabyte of visual data each day but requires little power to do so. IBM and iniLabs, a partner company in Zurich, plan to involve TrueNorth in the development of a visual sensor.

The team envisions the technology one day making its way into everyday machines like smartphones and automobiles. They plan to continue refining the software, which is derived from a basic model of how the brain functions and is not restricted by enduring questions about how the brain really works.

“At this point, we are not wanting for more insights from neuroscience today. We are not limited by it,” says Modha. “We are extending the boundaries of what computers can do efficiently.”

Researchers show how to spot viruses on equipment like drug mixers and pregnancy monitors: by examining their power usage.

By David Talbot on August 9, 2013

Hospital rooms beep and flash with many devices that are increasingly getting infected with malware (see “Computer Viruses Are ‘Rampant’ on Medical Devices in Hospitals”). But for several reasons, these gadgets are often incompatible with commercial security software.

Now, new technology developed by academic researchers could catch most malware on the devices just by noting subtle changes in their power consumption. This could give hospitals a quick way to spot equipment with dangerous vulnerabilities and take the machines offline. The technology could also apply to computer workstations used in industrial control settings such as power plants.

The system, dubbed WattsUpDoc, is based on work involving Kevin Fu, who heads a research group on medical-device security at the University of Michigan and has uncovered several vulnerabilities in medical equipment. The research group tested WattsUpDoc on an industrial-control workstation and on a compounder, a machine commonly used in hospitals to mix drugs. In both cases the devices ran on modified versions of the Windows operating system.

The malware detector first learned the devices’ normal power-consumption patterns. Then it was tested on machines deliberately infected with malware. It was able to detect abnormal activity more than 94 percent of the time when it had been trained to recognize that malware, and between 84 and 91 percent of the time with previously unseen malware.

The technology, which is scheduled to be presented at a conference next week, “highlights a novel way of monitoring,” says John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

The next step, says Fu, is to do far more field testing. It is likely to be a year or more before the device could be commercialized, he adds.

The eventual goal is for the technology to alert hospital IT administrators that something is amiss, even if the exact virus is never identified. That’s important, because there are hundreds of thousands of medical devices in the field that probably won’t get changed to address their underlying vulnerabilities, says Shane Clark, a grad student at the University of Massachusetts, who works with Fu and developed the prototype. “This is about ‘We’ve got a problem right now, and it’s hard to get any weight behind policy and design changes for everything out there. So what can we do right now to improve the situation?’” Clark says.

Hospital devices such as pregnancy monitors, compounders, and picture-storage systems for MRI machines are vulnerable to infection because they are typically connected to an internal network that is, in turn, connected to the Internet. In June the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that malware was a growing problem and encouraged device makers to update software.

The FDA said that no known injuries had resulted from medical malware and that the computer infections were not known to be deliberately targeting medical equipment. But Clark says viruses can still inhibit medical care: “You need to mix a solution, but the compounder is running slow and keeps rebooting, or is unresponsive.”

Unfortunately, he adds, “you can’t just slap a copy of McAfee antivirus on your medical device.” That’s because even though many medical devices run Windows, they often use custom versions of the operating system that are incompatible with conventional antivirus software. And some machines can’t be loaded with these protections because their manufacturers prohibit third-party applications.

Other computer security researchers have been working on detecting malware by using power consumption as a proxy for unusual behavior (see “Tiny Changes in Energy Use Could Mean Your Computer Is Under Attack”). The key with hospital equipment is getting a very detailed profile of normal usage and being able to both detect changes and avoid false alarms.

A startup called Genome Liberty is developing a consumer genetics test to gauge an individual’s ability to metabolize prescription drugs.
By Susan Young on August 13, 2013.

A personal genetics startup thinks that there is one set of DNA variants that everyone should know: the ones that help determine how you respond to drugs.

Genome Liberty, a New Jersey-based startup, wants to provide a $99 test that will tell customers, based on their genetics, if they should take a nonstandard dose of a drug because their body will break it down faster or slower than most people. In some cases the test might suggest a particular drug someone should take or avoid. “The idea is to give you a card to keep in your wallet, or an iPhone app, which says which medications you shouldn’t take,” says cofounder Jeffrey Rosenfeld, a genome scientist at Rutgers University.

The company would offer these tests directly to consumers, who could then relay any relevant information to their doctors, Rosenfeld says.

Genome Liberty isn’t the first company to offer such tests. The consumer genetics company 23andMealso offers some drug response tests in its genome scan, which also includes tests for things like eye color and the genetic risk for developing serious diseases. Rosenfeld says Genome Liberty wanted a more focused test. “The idea is to provide information that is usable, that you can act on,” he says.

Consumers who get the Genome Liberty drug response test would send a sample of saliva to the company’s lab. The company scans the genome for DNA variations in 11 liver enzyme genes, which are a subset of the dozens of genes encoding enzymes for drug metabolism. Enzymes in the liver process drugs and can either deactivate or activate drugs, depending on the compound. Different people carry different versions or amounts of many of these enzymes, which can affect how they respond to drugs. Some patients may process a drug more quickly, more slowly, or perhaps not at all.

Genome Liberty says that variants in those 11 enzymes can affect the activity of nearly 80 drugs in the body. The test “will tell people which medications they should take and which they should avoid based on markers in their DNA,” says Rosenfeld.

The company is using a crowdfunding site to raise money to develop its test, which is available for pre-order. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the patent claims that companies can make on genes (see “U.S. Supreme Court Says ‘Natural’ Human Genes May Not Be Patented”) helped spur Genome Liberty to launch. “We were worried about whether we could start this company or not,” says Rosenfeld. Until that decision, he says, most genes were covered by a patent.

It is still not clear whether genetic tests sold directly to consumers will come under regulatory scrutiny. In 2010, the FDA warned 23andMe and other consumer genetics companies that their services amount to medical devices and thus need regulatory approval. But since then, the U.S. government has not come up with clear rules for these companies. Nevertheless, 23andMe applied for regulatory approval for portions of its test last year (see “Personal Genetics Company Seeks Regulatory Approval”).

Another question is whether doctors will make use of information from a consumer genetics test. Physicians don’t always trust the results of direct-to-consumer tests and may not have clear medical guidelines for how to use it (see “Why We Have a Right to Consumer Genetics”). But the connections between the liver enzyme variants and drug response are well-supported, says Rosenfeld. If a doctor doesn’t want to accept these results, he says, then “find a different doctor.”

Predictive analytics can lower the costs associated with connecting wind and solar to the grid, says IBM.

By Martin LaMonica on August 13, 2013

Because the output from wind and solar power plants varies, they need backup—either fossil fuel plants or energy storage—to compensate for dips and spikes. But it’s rarely clear just how much the output will vary, so that backup power is often on standby even when it’s not needed.

Now IBM has developed software to address this problem. The software performs advanced data analysis that IBM hopes can improve predictions of renewables’ power output, and thus reduce the need for backup power. Using multiple data sources, including wind turbine sensors, weather forecasts, and images of clouds, the software can forecast power output as little as 15 minutes and as much as a month in advance. It’s now operating at a combined solar and wind demonstration project in Zhangbei, China.

If a plant’s operators could more accurately forecast the output of renewable power sources, they’d have less reason to rely on energy storage, which is typically needed now to provide a smooth flow of power into the transmission grid. “In the industry, storage is seen as the next disruptive technology,” says Michael Valocchi, vice president in IBM’s energy and utilities consulting business. “(But) if I can really predict in this manner, it’s not that I don’t need storage, but it makes storage less important.”

Utilities often rely on specialized companies to produce wind and solar forecasts based on weather models and other meteorological data, including anemometers on wind turbines. But wind measurements taken from turbines are often unreliable because energy has already been extracted from the incoming wind, and because vibrations affect readings, says IBM researcher Lloyd Treinish, the chief scientist of IBM’s weather modeling system. For its project in China, IBM analyzed data from all the turbines to come up with a more accurate representation of actual wind speed and direction, he says.

IBM also built a meteorological model specific to this site in northern China and installed video cameras to track the movements of clouds to inform solar forecasts. The entire data set is fed into a supercomputer to generate the forecasts.

There are a number of other efforts to improve weather forecasting via better data collection and analysis. The latest generation of wind turbines from General Electric, for example, features a control system designed to better predict power output by analyzing tens of thousands of sensor data points a second. The U.S. Department of Energy has funded a few research projects, including one at the University of California, San Diego, to capture images of clouds with special devices featuring fish-eye cameras. The project analyzes those images with algorithms to produce a prediction of how much solar power a plant might produce over the next 15 minutes.

Ela notes that while utilities’ forecasts of electricity demand have become sophisticated over the decades, their forecasts of the supply of that power are still immature.

By NICK BILTON
In my column this week, “Computer-Brain Interfaces Making Big Leaps,” I noted that a number of researchers and scientists were coming closer to technology usually reserved for science fiction: hacking our brains to remove unwanted and sad memories.

Although the idea of deleting a memory might sound appealing to some — who doesn’t want to forget that first heartbreak? — it might have disastrous consequences for our brains. It’s one thing to digitally enhance our memories with gadgets like iPhones and Google Glass, it’s something entirely different to delete or change past memories using technology.

Some readers asked if this was taking technology too far, saying such advancements cross a moral or ethical line that science should not pass.

“The human brain is intricate and a lot of damage can occur,” warned Jolan from Brooklyn in a comment on the column.

“If science wants to play with people’s thinking, then they ought to first decide about moral and ethical values of who they work for and the consequences of their actions,” wrote Mr. Magoo 5 from North Carolina.

Given today’s surveillance society, where the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and countless foreign governments monitor communications, connecting our brains and thoughts to the Internet might be asking for even more government trouble.

“What a mess that would be. Can you imagine N.S.A. hoovering up your thoughts from the Internet?” wrote Maurie Beck, from Encino, Calif. “You would need encryption software, but that might not be any different from software used today.”

“A hacker’s dream?” wrote another commentator. These types of hacks could start to resemble the government surveillance under “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s famous book “1984.”

But beyond the surveillance and ethical implications of hacking our brains and our memories, the biggest outcry from readers came in the form of philosophical worry.

“Forgetting your mistakes can be fatal,” wrote John B, a reader from Virginia.

“If our brains are wired, like computers are then, our minds will no longer have privacy,” wrote an anonymous reader. “The person I just met will be able to enter my head and know what I am thinking, possibly without me knowing. My joys and phobias would be public domain. That would make life very, very unpleasant for everyone.”

“A pacemaker is one thing. A cochlear implant sounds useful,” wrote SRSwain from Costa Rica. ”A spinal cord bypass to operate prosthetic limbs, or superacute hearing and vision, but magical transformation of memories and sensoria: No thanks.”

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
The Washington Post, the newspaper whose reporting helped topple a president and inspired a generation of journalists, is being sold for $250 million to the founder of Amazon.com, Jeffrey P. Bezos, in a deal that has shocked the industry.

Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, and the third generation of the Graham family to lead the paper, told the staff about the sale late Monday afternoon. They had gathered together in the newspaper’s auditorium at the behest of the publisher, Katharine Weymouth, his niece.

“I, along with Katharine Weymouth and our board of directors, decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post (after a transaction that would be in the best interest of our shareholders),” Mr. Graham said in a written statement.

In the auditorium, he closed his remarks by saying that nobody in the room should be sad — except, he said, “for me.”

The announcement was greeted by what many staff members described as “shock,” a reaction shared in newsrooms across the country as one of the crown jewels of newspapers was surrendered by one of the industry’s royal families.

In Mr. Bezos, The Post will have a very different owner, a technologist whose fortunes have risen in the last dozen years even as those of The Post and most newspapers have struggled. Through Amazon, the retailing giant, he has helped revolutionize the way people around the world consume — first books, then expanding to all kinds of goods and more recently in online storage, electronic books and online video, including a recent spate of original programming.

In the meeting, Mr. Graham stressed that Mr. Bezos would purchase The Post in a personal capacity and not on behalf of Amazon the company. The $250 million deal includes all of the publishing businesses owned by The Washington Post Company, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.

The Washington Post company plans to hold on to Slate magazine, The Root.com and Foreign Policy. According to the release, Mr. Bezos has asked Ms. Weymouth to remain at The Post along with Stephen P. Hills, president and general manager; Martin Baron, executive editor; and Fred Hiatt, editor of the editorial page.

Mr. Bezos, who did not attend the meeting at The Post on Monday, said in a statement that he had known Mr. Graham for the past decade and said about Mr. Graham that “I do not know a finer man.” Ms. Weymouth said that in negotiating this deal, Mr. Bezos made it clear he was not purely focused on profits.

The sale, at a price that would have been unthinkably low even a few years ago, represents the end of eight decades of ownership by the Graham family of The Post since Eugene Meyer bought The Post at auction on June 1, 1933. His son-in-law Phillip L. Graham served as president of the paper from 1947 until his death in 1963. Then Graham’s widow, Katharine Graham, oversaw the paper through the publication of the Pentagon Papers alongside The New York Times and its coverage of Watergate, the political scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon and also a starring role for the newspaper in the film, “All The President’s Men.”

The Post’s daily circulation peaked in 1993 with 832,332 average daily subscribers, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But like most newspapers, it has suffered greatly from circulation and advertising declines. By March, the newspaper’s daily circulation had dropped to 474,767.

The company became pressed enough for cash that Ms. Weymouth announced in February that it was looking to sell its flagship headquarters. According to a regulatory filing associated with the sale, Mr. Bezos will pay rent to The Post Company on the space for up to three years.

As of 2012, the newsroom, which once had more than 1,000 employees, had fewer than 640. People there on Monday described the mood as “somber” with “a lot of people kind of in disbelief.”
In an interview in July, Mr. Graham was cagey about the family’s future in the business. “I’ll just fall back on the same answer,” he said, adding, “In family companies you have judgments about the family and you have professional judgment. The family control of The Washington Post Company over the years, I think, has been a healthy thing.”

In an e-mail Monday, Ms. Weymouth, who replaced her uncle as publisher in 2008, talked about the effect of the sale on her family: “Yes — we knew the sale was coming. This was a process that was months in the making. It is, of course, sad for the family — we have been incredibly honored to have been a part of The Post for the past 80, but we have always understood that this is a public trust and our focus was on ensuring that it would remain strong for generations of readers to come.”

The Post is not the only newspaper to move to new ownership. The New York Times Company announced early Saturday morning that it had sold its New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, for $70 million, a fraction of the $1.1 billion the Times company paid for just The Globe in 1993. Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell, said that the Post sale reflected a broader trend of newspaper ownership returning to local investors rather than large, publicly traded enterprises.

“Newspapers are not really much creatures of the marketplace anymore,” said Mr. Doctor. “They’re not throwing off much in profits. They need shelter from the pressure of quarterly financial statements and reports.”

Newspaper analysts also said that the sale seems to be good news for the future of The Post. Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, said that for the first time someone with a native digital background was purchasing a major newspaper rather than an old-time businessman who would try to restore The Post to its earlier heyday and treat it “like 1953 Plymouths in Cuba.”

While Mr. Bezos may be purchasing The Post separate from Amazon, Mr. Mutter predicted that there could be collaborations between the brands, like The Post’s content appearing on every Kindle or Post video content appearing on Amazon.

“This is a guy who literally has invested in building rockets because he thinks it’s a good idea. I believe he’s bought the newspaper because he wants to re-envision the enterprise and The Post is an iconic world brand,” said Mr. Mutter about Mr. Bezos. “He knows something about building iconic world brands.”

Shortly after the announcement, Leonard Downie, the Post’s former executive editor, sat down at the Caribou Coffee store down the block from the newsroom he once led and contemplated a future where the Grahams no longer own the newspaper.

Mr. Graham had called Mr. Downie, now a vice president at The Post Company, earlier in the day. “I was completely shocked,” Mr. Downie said. “I could hardly say anything.”

Mr. Downie arrived at the paper nearly 50 years ago, and for all of the time since, the Graham family has been at the center of the newspaper — and more broadly, he said, at the center of journalism in Washington.

“The important thing about the Grahams for me,” he said, referring to Ben Bradlee, his predecessor as executive editor, “is that starting with Ben and with me, and I assume my successors, is that the news decisions were always ours, but the Grahams were always behind us.”

BOSTON | Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:27pm EDT
(Reuters) – Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX.O) manager Will Danoff cut his stake in Apple Inc (AAPL.O) 28 percent during the first half of the year, citing the iPhone maker’s “slowing growth profile.”

The star stockpicker remained bullish on Google Inc (GOOG.O) and on Tesla Motors Inc’s (TSLA.O) “disruptive technology and superior business model,” according to his latest monthly commentary for investors.

Danoff remains Apple’s largest active shareholder, only passive index and exchange-traded funds have larger stakes. His Contrafund owned 8.3 million shares of Apple at the end of June valued at $3.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. He owned nearly 11.6 million shares at the end of 2012.

“Reflective of the company’s slowing growth profile, Apple moved from the fund’s top position a year ago to the third spot as we reduced our stake in the company,” said Danoff, who runs the $94 billion Contrafund for Fidelity Investments in Boston.

Danoff has been trimming his stake in Apple since last year. Google has become his largest holding at 6 percent of net assets. Danoff said that in the second quarter he increased his position in electric car maker Tesla, “a firm we believed was fundamentally reengineering the automobile for the first time in decades.”

Meanwhile, Apple’s stock is off about 15 percent this year and its $452.50 price on Wednesday is well below the all-time high of $705.07 reached last September.

Apple’s plunge has hurt Danoff’s performance this year. Contrafund’s 2.05 percent return in the second quarter lagged the 2.91 percent advance on the benchmark S&P 500 Index.

But Danoff’s 15-year track record remains stellar. Over that span, Contrafund’s 7.35 percent annual return has beaten the benchmark S&P 500 Index by 3.11 percentage points each year.

Danoff reserved his most glowing remarks for Tesla. Contrafund owned $337 million worth of Tesla stock at the end of June after increasing its position 59 percent from the previous month, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Tesla’s shares have been on a rampage, soaring 387 percent over the past 12 months.

“We increased our position during the quarter, as we believed company’s disruptive technology and superior business model compared to industry peers may help it continue to grow at a fast pace for multiple years,” Danoff said in his commentary.

By Greg Roumeliotis
NEW YORK | Wed Jul 31, 2013 4:37pm EDT
(Reuters) – Michael Dell’s and Silver Lake’s $24.4 billion bid to take Dell Inc private suffered a blow on Wednesday after the company’s special committee rejected their request to change the voting rules in exchange for them offering $150 million more.

Dell shares fell more than 4 percent to as low as $12.28, their lowest level since news of the takeover broke on January 14, highlighting uncertainty among shareholders about the deal’s prospects. They closed down $1.6 percent at $12.66.

Michael Dell, who founded the eponymous company in 1984 from his college dorm-room, has been arguing since February that Dell needs to restructure as a private company to respond to the challenges posed to its computers by smart phones and tablets.

The special committee, set up by Dell’s board to assess whether shareholders were getting the best deal, refused on Wednesday to change the voting rules on the deal but said it would be willing to move the vote’s record date forward.

A person familiar with the matter later said Dell’s chief executive and Silver Lake expect their deal to collapse unless there is a change in how shareholder votes are counted.

At present, the buyout must be approved by a majority of all Dell shares, excluding the 15.7 percent stake held by Michael Dell and his affiliates. The buyout group last week raised its offer by 10 cents per share on the condition that the deal goes through if approved by a majority of the shares that are actually voted.

This followed two adjournments of shareholder meetings, on July 18 and July 24, after it became apparent the buyout group did not have enough votes supporting the deal.

The consortium estimated that in the latest tally, about 27 percent of Dell’s shares had not been voted and were therefore counted as “no” votes under the current voting standard.

Alex Mandl, the special committee’s chairman, wrote in a letter to the buyout group, “The committee is not prepared to accept your (voting rules) proposal. We are, however, willing to establish a new record date for a vote on a $13.75 per share transaction under the existing voting standard.”

The record date determines which Dell shareholders are entitled to vote on the deal. A second person familiar with the matter said the special committee would be willing to push the record date to August 10 for the vote to be held on September 10.

MOVING THE RECORD DATE

A shareholder meeting to vote under the current system on Michael Dell’s and Silver Lake’s original offer of $13.65 per share is scheduled for Friday.

“I would prefer to see an up or down vote than to see this be dragged out. I won’t try to predict what will happen on Friday because they are so unpredictable,” said Gautam Dhingra, chief executive of High Pointe Capital Management LLC, one of the several small Dell shareholders that oppose the deal at $13.75 per share.

The first source familiar with the matter said the buyout consortium believes that changing the record date is not good enough. Unless the voting standard changes, this is the end of the road for the deal, the source said.

The current record date is June 3 and market experts believe moving it forward benefits Michael Dell and Silver Lake because it gives them the backing of hedge funds that have bought Dell’s stock more recently with a view to earning just a few cents per share when the deal goes through.

It is however far from clear that the support of such investors would compensate for not changing the voting system.

“The question with moving the record date of course is, are there going to be enough votes for them to meet the threshold,” said Andy Levine, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Jones Day.

Activist investor Carl Icahn, who has amassed an 8.7 percent stake in Dell and is leading a charge with Southeastern Asset Management Inc against the buyout with an offer of their own, wrote in a letter to Dell shareholders on Wednesday it was time “to let the proposed freeze-out merger die”.

“Take the vote on Friday. Be at peace with the outcome. Immediately set the record date for the annual meeting and give stockholders the choice they deserve after all these months of uncertainty,” Icahn and Southeastern wrote.

If the record date is reset and Friday’s vote is postponed once again, then the annual meeting of shareholders should be held on the same date as the vote so that Dell shareholders are offered an alternative option, the two investors wrote.

If the buyout is rejected, Dell’s board should prevent Michael Dell from increasing his stake in the company and therefore strengthen his hand in a proxy fight, they added.

By Charlie Zhu
HONG KONG | Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:07pm EDT
(Reuters) – Three quarters of China’s solar-grade polysilicon producers face closure as Beijing looks to overhaul a bloated and inefficient industry, resulting in fewer but better companies to compete against Germany’s Wacker Chemie AG and South Korea’s OCI Co Ltd.

The polysilicon sector, which has around 40 companies employing 30,000 people and has received investment of 100 billion yuan ($16 billion), suffers from low quality and chronic over-capacity as local governments poured in money to feed a fast-growing solar panel industry, for which polysilicon is a key feedstock.

Demand for solar panels has eased since the global financial crisis, forcing governments worldwide to slash solar power subsidies, and leaving China sitting on idle capacity and mounting losses. To help prop up the solar industry, Beijing plans to more than quadruple solar power generating capacity to 35 gigawatts (GW) by 2015 to use up some of the huge domestic panel glut. It has also said it will accelerate technological upgrades in polysilicon to weed out inefficient producers and “nurture a batch of internationally competitive producers.”

People in the polysilicon industry say the moves will halve China’s production capacity to 100,000 metric tons (110231 tons) a year, leaving around 10 relatively strong firms with better technology and cost efficiency.

“Most producers will be eliminated rather than acquired. This may sound cruel, but is the reality as they are technologically uncompetitive,” Lu Jinbiao, a senior official at China’s top polysilicon producer GCL-Poly Energy, told Reuters.

The challenges mirror those faced by much of China’s manufacturing sector, from cement and steel to shipbuilding – local governments chasing jobs and economic growth over-invested in often high-cost, low-tech capacity in the mid-2000s when demand for solar panels was booming. That boom is now over.

“Large amounts of ineffective, high-cost production capacity will exit the market,” said Ma Haitian, deputy secretary general of the Silicon Industry of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, a Beijing-based industry lobby.

PRICE SLUMP

As smaller polysilicon producers, with average annual capacity of a few thousand metric tons, are pushed out, the likely winners will be larger producers such as GCL Poly, TBEA Co Ltd, China Silicon Corp and Daqo New Energy Corp. The shake-out is already underway as polysilicon prices have plunged to below $20 per kg from a 2008 peak of almost $400, forcing some producers in the northwestern province of Ningxia and eastern China’s Zhejiang province to file for bankruptcy.

Their plight is made worse by cheaper, and better quality, imports from producers such as MEMC Pasadena Inc and Michigan-based Hemlock Semiconductor Group – a venture of Dow Corning, Shin-Etsu Handotai and Mitsubishi Materials Corp – and Norway’s Renewable Energy.

Of the 69,000 metric tons of solar-grade polysilicon China consumed in January-June, 41,000 metric tons were imported, according to industry data. China’s solar panel makers prefer imported polysilicon, which has a higher purity that helps in energy conversion, company executives say.

Foreign polysilicon producers can break even at prices of around $20/kg, while break-even for Chinese firms with capacity of 10,000 metric tons or more is $20-$25, say industry specialists, who noted that most smaller Chinese producers had begun to lose money when prices slipped to $30-$40.

“Restructuring is a must. Most Chinese polysilicon enterprises will disappear and only about 10 will survive,” said Glenn Gu, senior solar analyst at consultant IHS in Shanghai.

NEW DAWN?

In an apparent bid to protect its domestic industry, Beijing this month imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties on U.S. and South Korean polysilicon imports, [ID:nL4N0FV1QI] but has yet to decide whether to do the same for European suppliers like Wacker Chemie. Analysts said that idea could be dropped after China and the European Union struck a solar panel trade deal last weekend. [ID:nL6N0FX04U]

“Such a settlement could mark the start of another global photovoltaics (solar technology) upturn,” Wacker Chemie said in announcing better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday, [ID:nL6N0G00GD] adding polysilicon prices may have bottomed.

Many of China’s leading solar cell and module manufacturers – such as LDK Solar Co Ltd, Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd, Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd and JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd – are sitting on long-term take-or-pay contracts with foreign polysilicon producers, under which they import set amounts at fixed prices of around $40-$50/kg, people in the industry said.

By some estimates, 30 percent of the $2.1 billion worth of polysilicon that China imported last year came from those contracts. Those deals looked good before the financial crisis, and some Chinese panel makers – who regularly mix imported polysilicon with local materials to control costs – also invested in their own polysilicon production.

Much of that investment has since been written off.

Smarter America
Discovery News, Nic Halverson

For all the leaps and bounds that motion tracking and virtual reality have made in recent years, haptic stimulation has largely taken a back seat to visual stimulation. However, a new device aims to put a more tangible virtual experience in the driver’s seat.
Developed by Rajinder Sodhi from the University of Illinois and Ivan Poupyrev from Disney Research, Aireal is a series of small machines that pufff air rings towards users, allowing them to feel objects and textures while engaging with virtual content.
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Aireal consists of five speaker-like modules — connected to a virtual reality system, computer, television — that can be positioned all around the user. The devices track body movements, then shoot low frequencies through an air nozzle to create vortices in the shape of small smoke rings.
“The sensation is quite pleasant,” Poupyrev told Fast Co.Design. “It’s not like air blowing onto your body. The air ring is a traveling low-pressure bubble. When it collapses, the air from outside rushes in, and it creates force at this particular point. It’s very localized, sharp puff of air.”
In theory, Aireal could be used to create more enhanced environments, whether the machine is used in tandem with virtual reality systems, gaming systems or while simply watching a video. By pulsing its air bubbles, the device can mimic water, wind and other textures. For example, Aireal could provide the sensation of swimming through bubbles if supplemented with a virtual reality experience. Same goes for watching a video of a flock of seagulls flying by — the user would be able to feel the wing flaps.
The developers have acknowledged a couple technical hiccups, though. The haptic machines make a small noise, like a low pitch knock, and there is a slight 150-millisecond delay between onscreen actions and air bubbles. While developers are ironing out the kinks, in the meantime, they’ve managed to incorporate the delay into the experience.
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“The demo we’re doing is very simple. You have a table display with a projection from the bottom. There’s a butterfly that flies around this table. You touch the butterfly, it’s projected on your hand and you can see a butterfly flapping its wings,” Poupyrev said. “If you think about trying to pick up a butterfly, you have to move very slowly. So inherently, people move slowly. In this interaction, the delay isn’t unnatural. It’s part of the story.”