The man who no longer matters

His at-bats used to be riveting; now, nobody's paying attention

By Joe Posnanski

NBCSports.com

updated 10:48 a.m. ET May 20, 2013

The thing that?s strange ? the thing that?s sad ? is how little excitement there is now when he comes to the plate. Let?s go to a moment in Sunday?s Angels-White Sox game. The count is 3-0, and Albert Pujols has the green light. There should be an electrical charge buzzing the air. Only ? really ? there isn?t a buzz. There isn?t a charge. There isn?t anything at all. The thrill-o-meter is at zero.

So strange. So sad. It used to be one of baseball?s great thrills to watch Albert Pujols hit. Whether you were a Cardinals fan or not, you would find yourself marking the pace of games by Albert Pujols' at bats.

Pujols just hit, so he probably won?t come up for another two innings, let?s get a hot dog.

St. Louis is down two, but Pujols is scheduled to hit fourth in the eighth.

Hey, the Cardinals avoiding the double play means Pujols will get up one more time before the game?s over.

Stuff like that. Here are the top five players in baseball history after 10 years in Batting Wins Above Replacement ? so, perhaps, the five best hitters after 10 seasons (the slash statistics are batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage):

Ted Williams: .347/.484/.633 with 366 doubles, 323 homers, 1,261 RBIs, 1,273 runs.

Albert Pujols: .331/.426/.624 with 426 doubles, 408 homers, 1,230 RBIs, 1186 runs.

Lou Gehrig: .343/.440/.640 with 321 doubles, 267 homers, 1,143 RBIs, 1,075 runs.

Stan Musial: .347/.431/.584 with 373 doubles, 206 homers, 923 RBIs, 1,044 runs.

Babe Ruth: .346/.477/.701 with 271 doubles, 305 homers, 932 RBIs, 969 runs.

Now, Ruth was a pitcher for much of his early career, and Pujols played in a better offensive era than many, but let?s not get too technical about all this. In his first 10 years, Albert Pujols hit more homers than any player ever, and also more doubles.

But the thing that was most striking about Pujols is that he was always exactly as good as he had been the year before. He never had a bad year. He never had anything RESEMBLING a bad year. They called him ?The Machine.? If you take the WORST statistical totals he had those first 10 years ? that is, the lowest batting average he had over those 10 years, the fewest home runs he hit, etc. -- you STILL come up with this season:

.312 average, .394 on-base, .561 slugging, 33 doubles, 34 homers, 117 RBIs, 99 runs.

Repeat: Those are his WORST numbers in those first 10 years. The guy was a first-ballot Hall of Famer on his worst day.

And he was thrilling to watch hit. He stood at the plate with that wide stance ? he looked so sturdy and immovable, like he was magnetically connected with the batters? box. He was like a marble statue up there.

The pitcher would throw a ball just off the plate, and Pujols would not only refuse to swing, he would look down and kick at the dirt as if the pitch had never happened, as if it was not even worthy of his disdain. Then, when the right pitch came, his pitch, he would unleash with such ferocity you could almost see the cartoon exclamation points dancing around the collision of bat and ball. Everyone has a Pujols example. He was always one swing away from inspiring awe.

That made him exciting, riveting, one of those athletes who could stop time ? and now it?s just gone. It isn?t just that Albert Pujols is hitting .241, slugging about 200 points below his career average and striking out more than he?s walking again. By now, we must have gotten used to Pujols slow starts.

Through May 3, 2011: .231/.298/.419 with seven homers.

Through May 14, 2012: .197/.255/.275 with one homer.

Through May 19, 2013: .241/.313/.418 with seven homers.

Each of the last two seasons, he hit well enough the last four-plus months of the season to end up with strong numbers. Last year, for instance, after May 14 he hit .312/.374/.589 with 42 doubles and 29 homers. You have to believe that he will start hitting again at some point.

But, even assuming he does again find the range, even assuming he has a few more productive years, the truth is that Pujols has entered a different phase of his career. After years of being the best player in baseball, Pujols is now sort of beside the point.

Look: He is 33 years old, just beginning a $240 million contract, and he?s playing for an overpriced and kind of dreadful team that looks like it was built by a rotisserie baseball beginner who ran out at the last minute and bought three fantasy baseball magazines. He looks hurt. He looks tired. He looks out of place. He looks ? well, truth is, who is even looking anymore?

Miguel Cabrera, who for years had to deal with being kind of a poor-man?s Albert, won the Triple Crown, something Pujols could never quite do. He?s the one who inspires awe now. St. Louis, the team and town he had come to represent, has gone on without him, and the Cardinals have the second-best record in baseball. And Pujols is not even the most exciting or interesting player on his own team.

You tell me: If you are a young Angels fan, who will you associate with and whose jersey will you buy ? Albert Pujols or Mike Trout?

It wasn?t supposed to happen like this. Few players in baseball history have worked as hard as Albert Pujols to achieve greatness. He was doubted every step of his life. He moved to Kansas City from the Dominican Republic when he was young, and everyone always whispered that he was older than he said. As a high schooler, he hit legendary home runs his average topped .500 ? but he was not even on the Kansas City?s Star?s all-metro first team, and he was not drafted. He went to Maple Woods Community College and crushed the ball with such ferocity that no self-respecting scout could possibly miss it ? he hit .461 with 22 homers in 40 games and, according to legend, did not strike out a single time. But scouts did miss it. Pujols was not drafted until the 13^th round by the Cardinals.

Eighteen months later, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa got his first good look at Pujols. His mind was utterly blown. Pujols played every day in St. Louis and had one of the greatest rookie years in baseball history. He was better every year after that.

He was driven by the doubters, spurred by the skepticism, galvanized by people?s pessimism. He talked often about his faith and how God awakened and strengthened him. He spent hours swinging bats in the cage. He cut out anything at all that might be a distraction. And he became the best player in baseball. Then, he became the best player in baseball again. Then he became the best player in baseball again.

It was a never-ending cycle for him. They said he was slow ? he stole 16 bases the next year. They said he struck out too much ? he started to annually appear in the Top 10 for fewest strikeouts per at-bat. They said his defense was a liability ? he won two Gold Gloves and almost certainly deserved a few more.

Then, two years ago, he was a free agent and, he did not think the Cardinals respected him enough. Their first offer to him was insultingly low (well, relatively speaking, it was a five-year deal for $130 million). The Cardinals seemed to want him on the cheap (well, relatively speaking, $210 million with a bunch of it deferred). There?s no way to get into Pujols? mind but you suspect he thought that, as the best player in baseball, he deserved the most money in baseball.

He got $240 million. He will be getting an average of almost $28 million a deal for the next eight years. Other than Alex Rodriguez?s insane contracts ? which brought their own pain ? it was the highest baseball deal ever signed.

But, there?s a cost too. And the cost is ? well, back to Sunday?s game. It is Angels and White Sox, a couple of sub-.500 teams, and the count is 3-0. The Angels announcer points out that Pujols does not often swing 3-0, but this is a good time to swing if the pitch is right. Sure. Swing away! The air is warm, meaning the ball will travel if hit right. The Angels are up comfortably. Here is a chance for Albert to break out of a slump, to get a little greedy, to give the fans a thrill.

The pitch is right. Pujols unleashes the swing. There are no cartoon exclamation points. Instead, he pops up to the shortstop, completing his 0-for-4 day. There will be better days, of course. But the big thing, is nobody really seems to notice. Nobody really seems to care. That?s the cost.

Joe Posnanski is the national columnist for NBC Sports. Follow him on Twitter @JPosnanski. Click here to subscribe to Joe's stories.

? 2013 NBC Sports.com? Reprints

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The man who no longer matters

Posnanski: Albert Pujols' at-bats used to be buzzworthy, must-watch events. Now, they're not. Here's the result of his struggles the past few years.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51937226/ns/sports-baseball/

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Rare fox makes comeback on Calif. island

CHANNEL ISLANDS NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) ? The rare and tiny island fox is on the verge of making a comeback from near-extinction in the northern Channel Islands, a rugged and wind-swept chain off Southern California, officials said Monday.

The population of the fox dropped to an all-time low of just 70 animals on Santa Cruz Island in 2000 before rebounding to 1,300 foxes now, said Yvonne Menard, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service. Santa Cruz is the largest island.

Populations on nearby San Miguel and Santa Rosa islands have also bounced back into the hundreds after dropping in 1999 to just 15 of the cat-sized animals on each island.

The island fox is only found on six of the Channel Islands, a chain of eight islands, five of which form a national park. Each of the six islands has its own unique fox subspecies because of generations of genetic isolation.

In a five-year period in the 1990s, fox populations plummeted more than 90 percent on the rugged and mountainous islands due to an influx of golden eagles, which preyed on them.

The eagles were attracted by hundreds of feral pigs that also made easy prey and were descendants of pigs brought to the island years ago by ranchers.

Four of the six subspecies were listed as federally protected endangered species in 2004, but now biologists say they may soon come off the list.

"The decline of the island fox population was so severe it caused biologists to shift from tracking fox populations to worrying about the fate of individual foxes," said Channel Islands National Park Superintendent Russell Galipeau.

"We are thrilled with this rapid recovery."

In 2002, biologists on Santa Cruz Island trapped the few remaining mating fox pairs and kept them in captivity to try to boost their numbers.

At the same time, wildlife officials captured and removed 44 golden eagles from the island between 2000 and 2006 and killed 5,000 feral pigs in a two-year period in a controversial program to restore the native fox population.

Hunters divided the island into five fenced-off zones and shot pigs from the air to eradicate them.

Now, biologists are working to reintroduce bald eagles to the island instead of the golden eagles that had taken their place.

Bald eagles disappeared from the Channel Islands by the early 1960s due to human impacts, primarily pollution. Millions of pounds of the deadly pesticide DDT and other chemicals were dumped in the ocean off the Palos Verdes Peninsula between the 1940s and 1970s.

The chemicals caused bald eagles to lay thin-shelled eggs that either dehydrate or break in the nest.

More than 40 bald eagles ? which don't eat foxes ? now call the northern Channel Islands home and this spring there are at least six active nests there.

____

On the Web:

Channel Islands National Park: http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rare-island-fox-rebounds-california-island-200823241.html

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Study led by GW professor provides better understanding of water's freezing behavior at nanoscale

Public release date: 21-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Joanne Welsh
jwelsh@gwu.edu
202-994-2050
George Washington University

The results of a new study led by George Washington University Professor Tianshu Li provide direct computational evidence that nucleation of ice in small droplets is strongly size-dependent, an important conclusion in understanding water's behavior at the nanoscale. The formation of ice at the nanoscale is a challenging, basic scientific research question whose answer also has important implications for climate research and other fields.

The crystallization of ice from supercooled water is generally initiated by a process called nucleation. Because of the speed and size of nucleationit occurs within nanoseconds and nanometersprobing it by experiment or simulation is a major challenge.

By using an advanced simulation method, Dr. Li and his collaborators, Davide Donadio of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, and Giulia Galli, a professor of chemistry and physics at the University of California, Davis, were able to demonstrate that nucleation of ice is substantially suppressed in nano-sized water droplets. Their paper, "Ice nucleation at the nanoscale probes no man's land of water," was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

"A current challenge for scientists is to unveil water's behaviors below -35 degrees Celsius and above -123 degrees Celsius, a temperature range that chemists call 'no man's land,' " said Dr. Li, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Fast ice crystallization can hardly be avoided at such low temperatures, so maintaining water in a liquid state is a major experimental challenge."

Since the frequency of ice nucleation scales with the volume of water, one of the strategies for overcoming this kinetic barrier is to reduce the volume of water. However, this raises the question of whether water at the nanoscale can still be regarded as equivalent to bulk water, and if not, where that boundary would be.

The team's results answer this question. By showing that the ice nucleation rate at the nanoscale can be several orders of magnitude smaller than that of bulk water, they demonstrate that water at such a small scale can no longer be considered bulk water.

"We also predict where this boundary would reside at various temperatures," Dr. Li said. The boundary refers to the size of the droplet where the difference vanishes. The team's findings will help with the interpretation of molecular beam experiments and set the guidelines for experiments that probe the 'no man's land' of water.

The results are also of importance in atmospheric science, as they may improve the climate model of the formation of ice clouds in upper troposphere, which effectively scatter incoming solar radiation and prevent earth from becoming overheated by the sun. The results have important implications in climate control research, too. One of the current debates is whether the formation of ice occurs near the surface or within the micrometer-sized droplets suspended in clouds. If it is the former, effective engineering approaches may be able to be taken to tune the surface tension of water so that the ice crystallization rate can be controlled.

"Our results, indeed, support the hypothesis of surface crystallization of ice in microscopic water droplets," Dr. Li said. "Obtaining the direct evidence is our next step."

###

GW School of Engineering and Applied Science

GW's School of Engineering and Applied Science prepares engineers and applied scientists to address society's technological challenges by offering outstanding undergraduate, graduate and professional educational programs, and by providing innovative, fundamental and applied research activities. The school has five academic departments, 11 research centers, 90 faculty and more than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Core areas of academic excellence include biomedical engineering, cybersecurity, high performance computing, nanotechnologies, robotics and transportation safety engineering.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 21-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Joanne Welsh
jwelsh@gwu.edu
202-994-2050
George Washington University

The results of a new study led by George Washington University Professor Tianshu Li provide direct computational evidence that nucleation of ice in small droplets is strongly size-dependent, an important conclusion in understanding water's behavior at the nanoscale. The formation of ice at the nanoscale is a challenging, basic scientific research question whose answer also has important implications for climate research and other fields.

The crystallization of ice from supercooled water is generally initiated by a process called nucleation. Because of the speed and size of nucleationit occurs within nanoseconds and nanometersprobing it by experiment or simulation is a major challenge.

By using an advanced simulation method, Dr. Li and his collaborators, Davide Donadio of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, and Giulia Galli, a professor of chemistry and physics at the University of California, Davis, were able to demonstrate that nucleation of ice is substantially suppressed in nano-sized water droplets. Their paper, "Ice nucleation at the nanoscale probes no man's land of water," was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

"A current challenge for scientists is to unveil water's behaviors below -35 degrees Celsius and above -123 degrees Celsius, a temperature range that chemists call 'no man's land,' " said Dr. Li, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Fast ice crystallization can hardly be avoided at such low temperatures, so maintaining water in a liquid state is a major experimental challenge."

Since the frequency of ice nucleation scales with the volume of water, one of the strategies for overcoming this kinetic barrier is to reduce the volume of water. However, this raises the question of whether water at the nanoscale can still be regarded as equivalent to bulk water, and if not, where that boundary would be.

The team's results answer this question. By showing that the ice nucleation rate at the nanoscale can be several orders of magnitude smaller than that of bulk water, they demonstrate that water at such a small scale can no longer be considered bulk water.

"We also predict where this boundary would reside at various temperatures," Dr. Li said. The boundary refers to the size of the droplet where the difference vanishes. The team's findings will help with the interpretation of molecular beam experiments and set the guidelines for experiments that probe the 'no man's land' of water.

The results are also of importance in atmospheric science, as they may improve the climate model of the formation of ice clouds in upper troposphere, which effectively scatter incoming solar radiation and prevent earth from becoming overheated by the sun. The results have important implications in climate control research, too. One of the current debates is whether the formation of ice occurs near the surface or within the micrometer-sized droplets suspended in clouds. If it is the former, effective engineering approaches may be able to be taken to tune the surface tension of water so that the ice crystallization rate can be controlled.

"Our results, indeed, support the hypothesis of surface crystallization of ice in microscopic water droplets," Dr. Li said. "Obtaining the direct evidence is our next step."

###

GW School of Engineering and Applied Science

GW's School of Engineering and Applied Science prepares engineers and applied scientists to address society's technological challenges by offering outstanding undergraduate, graduate and professional educational programs, and by providing innovative, fundamental and applied research activities. The school has five academic departments, 11 research centers, 90 faculty and more than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Core areas of academic excellence include biomedical engineering, cybersecurity, high performance computing, nanotechnologies, robotics and transportation safety engineering.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/gwu-slb052113.php

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Jackson concert director worked without contract

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Michael Jackson's doctor was not the only person working on the singer's ill-fated "This Is It" tour without a fully executed contract, a corporate attorney for concert promoter AEG Live LLC testified Monday.

The tour's director Kenny Ortega was being paid based on an agreement laid out solely in emails, AEG General Counsel Shawn Trell told jurors.

Jackson's mother is trying to show AEG was negligent in hiring Conrad Murray, the doctor who was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's June 2009 death.

Katherine Jackson claims AEG failed to properly investigate Murray before hiring him to serve as her son's tour physician, and that the company missed or ignored red flags about the singer's health before his death. AEG denies it hired Murray.

In court, attorneys for Katherine Jackson displayed emails sent a month before the death of her son in which Murray's contract terms were laid out.

Trell said those emails did not demonstrate an employment relationship ? a key element of the case that will be decided by a jury of six men and six women.

Trell acknowledged, however, that Ortega was paid for his work on the shows despite working under terms laid out only in a series of emails.

"Kenny Ortega is different from Conrad Murray," Trell testified.

Michael Jackson died before signing a $150,000 a month contract for Murray to serve as his doctor on the "This Is It" tour. AEG's attorneys say Jackson's signature was required to finalize Murrays' contract.

An email displayed in court showed Murray's contract terms. Other documents indicated AEG budgeted $300,000 to pay Murray for his work with Jackson in May and June of 2009.

Another email said executive Paul Gongaware informed others that Murray would be "full time" on the tour by mid-May.

Plaintiff's attorney Brian Panish asked Trell to agree with a statement that Murray was working for AEG.

"I would totally disagree with that statement," Trell said, noting that Ortega and Murray were considered independent contractors.

Trell was the second AEG executive to testify in the trial, which is entering its fourth week. AEG attorneys have yet to question him.

He also testified that the company obtained an insurance policy that covered the possible cancellation of some of the "This Is It" shows after a physician evaluated the singer.

Trell testified that five days before Jackson's death, top AEG executives were informed the singer was in poor health. By that point, Ortega had sent executives an email titled "Trouble at the front" detailing Jackson's problems.

"There are strong signs of paranoia, anxiety, and obsessive-like behavior," Ortega wrote to AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips. Jackson's symptoms were reminiscent of behavior that led to the cancellation of an HBO concert earlier in the decade. Ortega wrote.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jackson-concert-director-worked-without-contract-231738542.html

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Gimme Shelter: 9 Instant Buildings From Disaster Zones to Battlefields

Describing architecture as "instant" can mean different things to different people. During the post-War housing shortage, it meant prefab homes that went up in weeks. For disaster survivors, it can mean something as simple as a shelter that's assembled in hours. For the military, instant architecture often means truly instantaneous?hangars and medical tents that pop up in mere minutes.

Over the past few decades, as warfare has evolved and climate change has hastened the frequency of severe weather, we've seen "instant" buildings emerge as a topic in design schools and relief organizations. From shipping containers that unfold at the touch of a button to "buildings-in-a-bag" that need only water and air to be assembled, we're experiencing a renaissance in rapidly deployable architecture. Nine interesting examples?including a few from the past?follow.

---

Jean Prouv?'s Maison Aluminium M?tropole:

Jean Prouv?, who died in 1984, was one of the most vocal supporters of prefabrication. This classroom was the winning entry from a 1949 competition run by the French government, which asked architects to design a prefab package to provide classrooms and teacher housing in rural areas. Only 15 of the buildings were ever produced?but the design became definitive in modern architectural history. This stop-motion video shows one of the sets being assembled as part of a recent exhibition on Prouv?'s work.

Assembly time: six days.

---

Building In a Bag:

Cement-impregnated cloth gives these shelters?which go up in under an hour?their nickname: "building in a bag." To set up the hard-shell tents, you spray the concrete cloth with water drape it over an inflated balloon until it dries. It's fireproof, immune to snow and rain, and lasts as long as a decade.

Assembly time: an hour or less.

---

QuaDror by Dror Benshetrit:

QuaDror is actually a structural component developed by the Israeli product designer Dror Benshetrit. But the idea behind QuaDror, a disaster housing concept, is that the component can serve as a basic hinge for building shelter out of whatever happens to be lying around: wood, metal, plastic, whatever can be found. It's a smart proposal, because even though it requires a bit of work on site, it's cheaper (and faster) to transport small components rather than entire shelters.

Assembly time: one day.

---

Shelter System for the B-2 Stealth Bomber:

Why does the B-2 need its own storage system? Because its stealth coatings require exacting temperature controls to maintain. And when the plane is in action, a good hangar isn't always easy to find. So the Air Force contracted a company called American Spaceframe Fabricators to design a system that can be transported anywhere and goes up fast. The military now owns a handful of the massive structures, which can be disassembled and reassembled as needed, and have a unique clam-shell retractable entryway to accomodate the plane's wingspan. Similar shelters are used to provide shelter for smaller aircraft, like these clamshell-style pop-up hangars.

Assembly time: roughly ten days.

---

Onagawa Temporary Container Housing by Shigeru Ban:

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban devoted most of his office's resources to helping the displaced find shelter after the 2011 tsunami. This community, in the town of Onagawa, gave earthquake survivors a place to live as their town was being rebuilt. Stacked shipping containers supply 1800 units of temporary housing, and one very beautiful community center provides meeting space.

Assembly time: several months.

---

Mobile Housing by Yatsutaka Yoshimura:

Japanese architect Yatsutaka Yoshimura recently unveiled a proposal for a mobile housing unit built to the specifications of a shipping container. This way, the finished homes can be transported to the crisis site aboard flatbed trucks, rather than assembled when they arrive.

Assembly time: one day.

---

Uniteam's Collapsible Military Shelters:

The Rapid Deployment Shelter System, or RDSS, arrives in a standard shipping container and unfolds at the touch of a button. The system was designed to improve on the military's standard tent system, giving military hospitals and combat centers instant access to air conditioning, wifi, and electricity.

Assembly time: two minutes.

---

Daisuke Sugawara Hosuing by Azuhito Nakano:

Being displaced from your home after a disaster affects people in a whole host of long-term ways, ranging from financial to emotional. The concept behind this community of 60 homes in Rikuzentakata (an area "wiped off the map" after the tsunami in 2011) was to encourage interaction between residents. The architects arranged the homes in an interlocking pattern that connects garden to garden?the hope being that residents will run into each other more often and build relationships.

Assembly time: a few weeks.

---

Liina Transitional Shelter:

"According to a 2007 report by Christian Aid," write the students behind this brilliant flatpack shelter, "the number of refugees worldwide is expected to exceed 1 billion by 2050." Liina, a modular shelter designed by Aalto University students, is intended to provide a temporary home for up to five years. Using a system of interlocking wood panels and simple fabric straps, Liina only takes six hours to assemble after it's unpacked from its shipping container. And remarkably, it requires zero power tools.

Assembly time: six hours.

---

Source: http://gizmodo.com/gimme-shelter-9-instant-buildings-from-disaster-areas-495820265

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Bayer says lung drug shows promise in prolonged trial

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bayer said extended use of its experimental riociguat pill to treat a life-threatening form of high blood pressure in the lungs was shown to be safe and effective in a prolonged trial.

In the extension of a late-stage trial, the drug was shown to help people suffering from pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a progressively worsening condition that can overburden the heart, to better tolerate physical exercise.

It said that side effects, including headache, dizziness, indigestion and low blood pressure, were tolerable.

Bayer has said it expects peak annual sales of more than 500 million euros ($646 million) from the product and analysts polled by Thomson Reuters Pharma on average see 2017 sales from riociguat of $679 million, posing a potential challenge to existing treatments from Actelion and Gilead.

Preliminary results of the study were published in October, encouraging Bayer to earlier this year submit riociguat for regulatory approval in the United States and Europe.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Frank Siebelt; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bayer-says-lung-drug-shows-promise-prolonged-trial-191340633.html

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Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore, Kings Of Leon Make Music The Star At Hangout Fest

Though the scenery was plenty nice, the music stole the show at Hangout 2013.
By James Montgomery

Macklemore performs at Hangout Fest
Photo: MTV

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707647/hangout-music-festival-2013-recap.jhtml

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