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WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was joined by world leaders and nearly 3,000 guests as he delivered the keynote address to inaugurate the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Other speakers during the ceremony included the KAUST Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, His Excellency Ali Al-Naimi, Minister of Higher Education, His Excellency Dr. Khaled Al-Anqari, and the President of KAUST, Professor Choon Fong Shih.

link only http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aK4daf8MD.Bw

Increasing productivity in healthcare is difficult but not impossible. Here's how. The president tells us that we should be “bending the cost curve” on healthcare, and politicans everywhere are scrambling to present their favored pork projects as plans that would do just that. Lobbyists of every stripe and color are storming legislative offices with great wads of dead presidents and the commentariat debates angels dancing upon pinheads: that is, what could be done if we had a legislative system without legislators, pork, lobbyists, or dead presidents printed on pieces of paper.What I have yet to see (and apologies to those...

ASHBURNHAM - There are rolling hills and ivy-covered brick buildings. There are small classrooms, high-tech labs, and well-manicured fields. There’s even a clock tower with a massive bell that rings for special events. Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception. This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked...

In the late '60s, with a little prodding from his sons, my father finally gave in and replaced his monaural Garrard turntable with a stereo one. Suddenly, Sgt. Pepper's band sounded so much bigger. And clearer. I could hear two distinct guitars playing, not just a generic guitar sound. Two decades later, in 1988, I finally broke down and bought a CD player and the first of many Beatles CDs -- now, that was a jump from what I'd been hearing on vinyl for years. There were so many more instruments I'd never noticed. And notes I'd never heard. On...

I just created a group on facebook; Western Mass 912 Project. When friends enter that into search bar nothing comes up. Does anyone have a clue what I did wrong? Thanx Bill

The people of the United States find themselves in the midst of a severe recession, with unemployment higher than it has been in many years, housing prices cratering, retirement plans collapsing, and their lifestyles constricting. The financial industry collapsed. We had to come to the rescue, pouring our own futures into saving the banks, brokerages, and insurance companies from their own greedy foolishness. The stagnant American automobile industry was imploding, and the people had to bail them out too, further mortgaging the future of their children. Our politicians responded to this catastrophe by spending our future for us, and then...

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one. – Friedrich Nietzsche For those of us who work in a corporate environment, it is very clear that we either follow corporate policies or lose our job. At my workplace for example, we are not allowed to display any sort of religious material in or outside our offices. We are also forced to accept our company’s policies in regards to environmentalism or alternative lifestyles. Company policies are not created from the consensus or vote by the employees. Many companies have and are engaged in...

eBay, the San Jose-based online-auctions giant, is trading two-thirds of the Internet phone service Skype for about $2 billion, reversing a 2005 acquisition that many analysts considered a head scratcher from the beginning. It's really a reversal: Among the private funds buying a 65 percent stake in the business from eBay is Index Ventures, a venture-capital firm which backed Skype as a startup and profited nicely from the original sale of the company. Silver Lake Capital, a private-equity firm famous for tech buyouts like that of hard-drive maker Seagate, led the deal, in which eBay sold a 65 percent stake...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THURSDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2009 AT 6:47 PM Open Government Agenda Spills into States and Localities Posted by Robynn Sturm From New York to California, the White House Open Government Initiative is pleased to see states and cities increasing transparency and civic engagement. On June 5th, New York State announced Empire 2.0, modeled on the President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. Three weeks later, Mayor Bloomberg announced a series of transparency initiatives, including NYC Big Apps, a new annual prize for innovative applications based on city data....

Every time they send a text message, watch a YouTube video, log on to Facebook and plug in their iPods, today's kids are getting stupider.At least, that's what Mark Bauerlein argues in his provocative book "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future."Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, has spent the last few years touring the country evangelizing about the dangers of exposing the young to technology.His love-it-or-despise it book, newly released in paperback, has spawned heated arguments among parents, teachers and students who are spending more and more time plugged...

The Obama administration unveiled $1.2 billion in federal grants for electronic health records systems on Thursday, the first wave of funding under a health-care reform plan to create vast records-sharing networks aimed at cutting costs and improving care in the coming decade. The administration has described such computer systems as a crucial step in overhauling the nation's expensive health-care system. It allocated more than $36 billion in the landmark stimulus legislation to spur adoption of the equipment by doctors and hospitals along with the development of the networks that will link them all together... ...about half the grant money would...

IBM said it was looking to DNA "origami" for a powerful new generation of ultra-tiny microchips. The US computer giant collaborated with California Institute of Technology researchers to develop a way to design microchips that mimic how chains of DNA molecules fold, allowing for processors far smaller and denser than any seen today. "This is a way to assemble an electronics device of the future," said Bill Hinsberg, manager of the lithography group at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California, on Monday. "It offers a potential way to construct nano-scale devices. The industry has always gone in the direction of...

FOR generations, we doctors have promised our patients that medical advances will allow us all to live longer, more comfortable lives. Now that these results are finally arriving, "health-care reform" -- or "insurance reform," as they're now pitching it -- could snatch the rug out from under us. Cost-control is central to any health-care "reform" along the lines favored by President Obama and congressional Democrats. But new treatments, while ever more precise and personalized, are also costlier. Anyone who's been saved from cancer by the latest targeted chemotherapy treatment, had a lung or breast cancer diagnosed early by a CT...

[...] Candidates don't necessarily need to be programmers or systems analysts, or have worked for a tech company to get hired, says Todd Thibodeaux, CompTIA's CEO. "Most IT jobs are in tech support in a wide range of businesses like hotels, hospitals, and factories, [...] "These days, employers are looking for people who can do hardware-and-software integration and data security," Thibodeaux adds. "One category in big demand now is basic computer skills, which will get you hired at the entry level. Then you can add certifications from specific vendors like Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) and HP (HPQ, Fortune 500), and...

The White House is in the hands of the opposition party. The Senate and House are also firmly in its hands...there's no clear candidate for the next presidential election who can excite the base and appeal to the center...this is also what it was like to be a Democrat four years ago... The pundits today are as fixated on the news cycle and identity politics as they were four years ago. Then, however, they missed a major story and it's possible that they may be missing the follow-up right now. The seeds of today's Democratic success were planted four years...

As the new owner of an iPhone, I'm overwhelmed by the number of applications available for it. I'm certain many of you must have discovered some gems. What do you consider your top five useful applications? Your top two or three "just plain fun" applications? Your "you gotta see this to believe it" application? I love the phone except the battery life is outrageously short and it required switching to AT&T from Verizon. I live in Atlanta and am stunned and how many dead zones and dropped calls I suffer here with AT&T. Verizon was like a tightly woven blanket.

Robert Charette // Fri, August 07, 2009 The London Daily Mail published a long, interesting and disturbing story yesterday about the ease with which security experts were able to hack the supposedly "unforgeable" new UK ID card for foreign nationals and change the data within the embedded microchip within minutes. Given that the hacked ID card uses the same technology as is to be used in National ID cards for UK residents in the next few years, the implications are obvious. The Daily Mail says that when the UK government was told of its findings, the government dismissed them, saying,...

Is US Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra a Phony? This is the sort of question you might ask after trying to actually verify his supposed MS in Information Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park campus. The registrar has no record of it. After initially posting this article the degree has cropped up apparently at the nearby University Campus in 2001. This was found by Nextgov.Com. But his degree in biology has yet to appear as his record shows a degree from College Park Campus for Psychology and nothing more. I have queried the White House for clarification...

I don’t like carrying cell phones. When it came to buying a wireless phone, I was one of the last holdouts. My house is a bit remote and to this date it has absolutely no cell coverage. Back in 2001, almost everyone I knew already had a cell phone. Finally, I broke down and bought a top of the line Motorola. It was in the $300 plus price range with a two year contract. I even bought a serial port Outlook synchronization device to download contacts and calendar information. I did have fun learning to use all of the device’s...