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Take An Underwater Tour Of The Galapagos With Google
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Few have explored the remote volcanic islands of the Galapagos archipelago, an otherworldly landscape inhabited by the world's largest tortoises and other fantastical creatures that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Soon it will take only the click of a mouse or finger swipe on a tablet to explore some of the Galapagos Islands' most remote areas, surrounding waters and unique creatures.
Mountain View, Calif.,-based Google sent hikers to the Galapagos with Street View gear called "trekkers," 42-pound computer backpacks with large, soccer ball-like cameras mounted on a tower.
Each orb has 15 cameras inside it that have captured panoramic views of some of the most inaccessible places on the Galapagos. Crews from The Catlin Seaview Survey worked with Google to capture 360-degree views of selected underwater areas too.
"We spent 10 days there hiking over trails ... and even down the crater of an active volcano," Raleigh Seamster, the project's leader for Google Maps said. "And these are islands, so half of the life there is under the water surface. So (we brought) Street View underwater to swim with sea lions, sharks and other marine animals."
Google is processing the footage and is trying to stitch it together. It hopes to post it to Street View later this year.
The cameras captured the nesting sites of blue-footed boobies, the red-throated "magnificent frigatebirds," swimming hammerhead sharks and, of course, the island's giant tortoises.
Scientists working with Google are exploring the footage for other species and hope to update the pictures regularly throughout the years as they study the effects of invasive species, tourism and climate change on the island's ecosystems.
"We hope that children in classrooms around the world will be trying to discover what they can see in the images, even tiny creatures like insects," said Daniel Orellana, a scientist with the Charles Darwin Foundation.
"We can use this as an education experience for children, and there is a huge opportunity for rare discoveries."
Orellana and others supervised the Google trekkers and helped guide them to remote areas either off-limits to tourists or rarely visited because they are hard to reach.
They also captured images of the areas frequented by tourists so they can keep track of how this access is affecting the environment.
Since launching Street View in 2007, Google has expanded from urban neighborhoods accessed easily by its mapping cars to more hard-to-access sites like the ocean floor, the Amazon rain forest and the Arctic.
"This whole project was part of Google's ongoing effort to build the most comprehensive and accurate map of the world," Seamster said.
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Follow Jason Dearen on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen .
‘Smart Guns’ Could Allow Owners To Disable Remotely
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A high-tech startup is wading into the gun control debate with a wireless controller that would allow gun owners to know when their weapon is being moved – and disable it remotely.
The technology, but not an actual gun, was demonstrated Tuesday at a wireless technology conference in Las Vegas and was shown to The Associated Press in advance. It comes at a time when lawmakers around the U.S. are considering contentious smart gun laws that would require new guns to include high-tech devices that limit who can fire them.
The new Yardarm Technologies LLC system would trigger an alarm on an owner's cellphone if a gun is moved, and the owner could then hit a button to activate the safety and disable the weapon. New guns would come with a microchip on the body and antennas winding around the grip. It would add about $50 to the cost of a gun, and about $12 a year for the service.
"The idea is to connect gun owners more directly with their guns, no matter what the circumstance," said Yardarm CEO Robert Stewart.
The Yardarm system is one of several recently introduced high-tech offerings: the iGun only fires if it recognizes a ring on a finger, the Intelligun uses a fingerprint locking system and TriggerSmart uses radio frequency identification.
The first smart guns were proposed more than 20 years ago, but they failed to take off for several reasons: questionable technology, added costs and concerns from some gun rights about limitations on Second Amendment rights.
Recent high-profile shootings, combined with new technologies, have revived interest. Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit created by Newtown, Conn., community members, is offering venture capital for new gun safety technologies, and President Barack Obama included smart guns as part of his plan to reduce gun violence.
Stewart said his company has addressed privacy concerns about its system, which would not only include live tracking but also a history of where a gun has been. Yardarm has an exclusive telephony network to avoid hackers and spotty wireless systems, and gun owners could "self-destruct" the technology on the guns themselves if they wish, he said.
National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said his organization is concerned about added costs and the reliability of smart guns in general.
"We believe that the technology does not exist today where a so-called smart gun can operate with 100 percent or close to it reliability," he said, "and a firearm that does not function when it is required to is not a smart gun."
The added costs are "a luxury tax on self-defense," Arulanandam said.
At this point, there are no guns that can be wirelessly tracked or disabled, but there are systems that can locate and disable stolen cars. In 2011, one such company, OnStar LLC, came under fire for continuing to track customers' locations even after they discontinued their service. The company reversed the policy after a barrage of privacy complaints.
Last week, lawmakers in California and Massachusetts considered proposals to require gun makers to add high tech safety devices that allow only their owners to fire them. New Jersey has adopted a similar law.
Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the nonprofit Violence Policy Center, said his organization has no position on smart guns. However, he said he does oppose federal tax dollars for their research because they wouldn't impact the 310 million firearms already circulating in the U.S. today.
Donald Sebastian, a senior vice president at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, is developing a smart gun aftermarket conversion that would work on semi-automatic weapons, and he said the public may be ready for widespread adoption of smart guns.
"It's been a long, tough battle to get any acceptance of technologies in weapons, but today there's just more general acceptance of electronics in our lives, more than even five years ago," he said. "Also, frankly, this whole stream of mass killings is really making people recognize the need for something to change."
Doctors Save Ohio Boy’s Life By ‘Printing’ Him An Airway Tube
-- In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day.
It's the latest advance from the booming field of regenerative medicine, making body parts in the lab.
In the case of Kaiba (KEYE'-buh) Gionfriddo, doctors didn't have a moment to spare. Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy's airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints but had not implanted one in a patient yet.
In a single day, they "printed out" 100 tiny tubes, using computer-guided lasers to stack and fuse thin layers of plastic instead of paper and ink to form various shapes and sizes. The next day, with special permission from the Food and Drug Administration, they implanted one of these tubes in Kaiba, the first time this has been done.
Suddenly, a baby that doctors had said would probably not leave the hospital alive could breathe normally for the first time. He was 3 months old when the operation was done last year and is nearly 19 months old now. He is about to have his tracheotomy tube removed; it was placed when he was a couple months old and needed a breathing machine. And he has not had a single breathing crisis since coming home a year ago.
"He's a pretty healthy kid right now," said Dr. Glenn Green, a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where the operation was done. It's described in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Independent experts praised the work and the potential for 3-D printing to create more body parts to solve unmet medical needs.
"It's the wave of the future," said Dr. Robert Weatherly, a pediatric specialist at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. "I'm impressed by what they were able to accomplish."
So far, only a few adults have had trachea, or windpipe transplants, usually to replace ones destroyed by cancer. The windpipes came from dead donors or were lab-made, sometimes using stem cells. Last month, a 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe received one grown from her own stem cells onto a plastic scaffold at a hospital in Peoria, Ill.
Kaiba had a different problem – an incompletely formed bronchus, one of the two airways that branch off the windpipe like pant legs to the lungs. About 2,000 babies are born with such defects each year in the United States and most outgrow them by age 2 or 3, as more tissue develops.
In severe cases, parents learn of the defect when the child suddenly stops breathing and dies. That almost happened when Kaiba was 6 weeks old at a restaurant with his parents, April and Bryan Gionfriddo, who live in Youngstown, in northeast Ohio.
"He turned blue and stopped breathing on us," and his father did CPR to revive him, April Gionfriddo said.
More episodes followed, and Kaiba had to go on a breathing machine when he was 2 months old. Doctors told the couple his condition was grave.
"Quite a few of them said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive. It was pretty scary," his mother said. "We pretty much prayed every night, hoping that he would pull through."
Then a doctor at Akron Children's Hospital, Marc Nelson, suggested the experimental work in Michigan. Researchers there were testing airway splints made from biodegradable polyester that is sometimes used to repair bone and cartilage.
Kaiba had the operation on Feb. 9, 2012. The splint was placed around his defective bronchus, which was stitched to the splint to keep it from collapsing. The splint has a slit along its length so it can expand and grow as the child does – something a permanent, artificial implant could not do.
The plastic is designed to degrade and gradually be absorbed by the body over three years, as healthy tissue forms to replace it, said the biomedical engineer who led the work, Scott Hollister.
Green and Scott Hollister have a patent pending on the device and Hollister has a financial interest in a company that makes scaffolds for implants.
Dr. John Bent, a pediatric specialist at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said only time will tell if this proves to be a permanent solution, but he praised the researchers for persevering to develop it.
"I can think of a handful of children I have seen in the last two decades who suffered greatly ... that likely would have benefited from this technology," Bent said.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
More Doctors And Hospitals Using Electronic Medical Records
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says more doctors and hospitals are embracing technology as adoption of computerized medical records reaches a "tipping point" in America.
A report Wednesday from Health and Human Services says more than 50 percent of doctors' offices and 4 in 5 hospitals have transitioned from paper to electronic records, thanks partly to more than $14 billion in government incentive payments.
The hope is that electronic records will make caring for patients safer and less costly, by helping avoid mistakes and cutting down on duplication.
But others say there's still a long way to go. An outside group's report last year found little progress in getting medical computers in different offices to talk to each other. Concerns have also surfaced about patient privacy and vulnerability to fraud.
Pentagon Seeks Update To Health Records System
WASHINGTON — A U.S. official says the Pentagon has decided to buy a new computerized health records system that will allow the department to better share and merge its data with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to announce the decision Wednesday, amid increasing pressure from Congress to address the frustrating delays and paperwork shuffle as service members move from the military's health care program to the VA system.
The official says a monthlong review Hagel ordered concluded the Pentagon should not simply adopt the VA's current electronic records system because buying a new software program would provide better technology and be more effective into the future.
The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the announcement so requested anonymity.
‘"Arrested Development" Fans Are More Passionate Than "Big Bang" Fans’
NEW YORK — Portia de Rossi only believed it was happening when her agent got the good news from the producers. Michael Cera only believed it was happening when the cameras rolled.
It happened all right. After years of clamoring from fans and rumors firing them up while the cast hung on for a green light, "Arrested Development" has risen from the dead with 15 half-hours premiering en masse on Netflix on Sunday at 3:01 a.m. EDT.
"Arrested Development" is the cock-eyed comedy blessed with a king's ransom of talent and the twisted vision of its mastermind, Matt Hurwitz, that aired on Fox for three seasons as a cult favorite, then was canceled for low ratings – and maybe because it befuddled everyone who wasn't hooked on its lunacy. (Those original three seasons are available for streaming on Netflix, too.)
"I think the show scored some `cool points' for dying before its time," says Cera. "But there are still a lot more places for it to go."
Yes, "Arrested Development" died young with a beautiful, if funny-to-look-at, corpse. But its fans weren't ready to bury it. And said so.
"Clearly a lot of people DIDN'T like the show," Jason Bateman allows, "so I guess all we were hearing from were those who do – and that happens to be a brand of people who are not afraid of speaking their minds."
Now reanimated by public outcry, "Arrested" is going new places.
"Mitch and the cast didn't want to do something not as good as the old series," says Bateman (who plays Michael Bluth, the fractious family's would-be mediating presence). "We didn't want to do something lateral or just a retread."
"I think it's new at every opportunity," says Cera (who plays Michael Bluth's straight-arrow son), "while retaining the show's original heart."
The new Netflix season takes the form of what you might call an anthology as it updates viewers, character by character with each episode, on the Bluth family – that once-wealthy, now-broke and at-each-other's-throats clan squabbling in Newport Beach, Calif.
A wicked homage to the scandals of Enron and Tyco and a loopy foreshadowing of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, "Arrested" premiered in 2003 as a sendup of high-end vanities, greed and corruption as displayed within the Bluth family circle.
Besides de Rossi, Cera and Bateman, the cast of "Arrested" Redux brings back Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter, who reconvened in a strategic yet catch-as-catch-can fashion.
"There was no reality where we could get everybody for a full 7- or 8-month period," explains Hurwitz. "That gave birth to the form we came up with for the new series."
The 15 episodes dwell on individual characters during the six-year span from when the series was canceled in 2006 up through 2012. That structure was supposed to make it simple to book each actor for an isolated shooting schedule.
Then Hurwitz took his creativity another step. Since all the episodes are happening simultaneously, he couldn't resist including crossover appearances from other actors in each episode. He wanted characters and story lines from different episodes to intersect. But his ambition made it all the trickier getting all the actors he needed in place for any given episode.
"In a quarter of the scenes, someone is green-screened in," says Hurwitz, who goes on to concede that what began as a solution to a problem of logistics inspired him to create new problems for himself. For instance: "If two characters are having a conversation in one of those characters' episodes and that character's life changes, then in the other character's episode you show the other side of the conversation and the result of it on THAT character."
The overall effect is a sort of hypertext array for the 15 episodes.
"Matt made it a choose-your-own-adventure season, in that you can watch any episode out of order and it makes sense but, depending on which order you watch them, the series kind of tells a different story," says de Rossi (who plays spoiled materialist sister Lindsay).
Not that "Arrested Development" has ever chosen the simple or obvious path. From the start, it was dense, convoluted and layered, packed with sight gags, self-referential jokes, flashbacks, hand-held cinematography with run-on sequences (promoting improvisation to enhance Hurwitz's scripts) and, of course, its droll, documentarylike narration by Ron Howard, one of the show's executive producers.
On Fox, the show won six Emmys and a Peabody as well as critics' love while always fighting for its life in the ratings. But Hurwitz is philosophical about the obstacles his show has faced. They seem to have given him license to obliterate boundaries that otherwise would have hemmed him in.
"All of the limitations," he says brightly, "are great creative opportunities."
That applied to the new episodes' shooting pace, which Arnett describes as "run-and-gun and crazy."
"But it really worked to our advantage. It was `OK, get over here, here we go,' and we were right back into it," says Arnett (who plays Lindsay's older brother, Gob, a preening, mediocre stage magician). "After working together on the series before, all of us just kind of knew what we're doing. There's an implicit trust there. I know that sounds corny, but it's true."
This is a mutual admiration society: The cast heaps praise on Hurwitz, who volleys it back at his actors. And they all join in celebrating "Arrested" viewers, but for whom the show would be long dead and forgotten.
"There are way, way more fans of `The Big Bang Theory,'" notes David Cross (who plays Tobius Funke, a quack-psychiatrist-turned-actor-wannabe). "But they're not as passionate as `Arrested Development' fans – because there's more to be passionate about."
"In either a conscious or unconscious way, our audience thinks – and rightly so – it's THEIR show," says Jeffrey Tambor (who plays jailbird-patriarch George Bluth Sr.).
"A lot of people have told me over the years that they would build friendships around the show," Ron Howard adds. "They would judge first dates on whether that person likes `Arrested Development' or not. It was a means of evaluation."
Does that mean there might be children walking around today whose parents were united by "Arrested Development"?
"I think that's fair to assume," Howard says with a laugh.
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Online:
http://www.netflix.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE – Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at . http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier
Today Is Likely Xbox Day
REMOND, Washington (AP) — Will Xbox mark the spot once again for Microsoft?
The company is set to reveal the next generation of its Xbox entertainment console during a presentation Tuesday at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
It's been eight years since the launch of the Xbox 360. The original Xbox debuted in 2001, and its high-definition successor premiered in 2005.
For the past two years, Microsoft has led the gaming industry in console sales with the Xbox 360. In April alone, consumers spent $208 million on Xbox hardware, software and accessories, more than rival consoles from Nintendo and Sony, according to market research firm NPD Group.
Nintendo kicked off the next generation of gaming last November with the launch of the Wii U, the successor to the popular Wii system featuring an innovative tablet-like controller yet graphics on par with the Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Yet Nintendo said the console sold just 3.45 million units by the end of March, well below expectations.
Sony was next, teasing plans for its upcoming PlayStation 4 at an event last February in New York. The reaction to that console, which featured richer graphics and more social features, was mixed.
Microsoft hasn't said what games will be on display Tuesday, but Activison-Blizzard Inc. previously announced that "Call of Duty: Ghosts," the next chapter in its popular military shooter franchise, would make an appearance at the event.
Xbox has been the exclusive home to such popular gaming franchises as sci-fi first-person shooter "Halo," racing simulator "Forza" and alien shoot-'em-up "Gears of War." In recent years, Microsoft expanded the scope of the Xbox 360 beyond just games, adding streaming media apps and the family-friendly Kinect system.
"They need to show good games," said Stephen Totilo, editor of gaming site Kotaku.com. "There's been anxiety among Xbox fans that Microsoft has forgotten or doesn't value the core gamer as much. We saw this when Microsoft introduced the Kinect and went after families and kids."
Tuesday's event will give Microsoft the opportunity to address several questions about the rumored hardware, including what it will cost, whether it can play used games or Blu-ray discs and if it will require a constant connection to the Internet.
Microsoft likely won't showcase all aspects of the new Xbox. The company has another presentation scheduled three weeks later during E3, the gaming industry's annual convention in Los Angeles.
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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.
Eminem Sues Facebook
DETROIT — Eminem's song publisher is suing Facebook and an ad agency, saying they copied music from one of the rapper's songs.
Eight Mile Style filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit on Monday alleging that a 30-second Facebook ad broadcast online last month copied music from Eminem's 2000 song "Under the Influence."
The Detroit Free Press ( ) reports that the ad was featured in a webcast by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce Facebook Home, an interface for Android phones. http://on.freep.com/10LFB2N
The complaint says Portland, Ore., ad agency Wieden+Kennedy copied Eminem's music "in an effort to curry favor" with Facebook by catering to Zuckerberg's personal likes and to "invoke the same irreverent theme" of the song.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes declined comment. A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with the ad agency.
NYU Researchers Gave Secrets To Chinese Competitors, Feds Say
NEW YORK — Three New York University researchers from China divulged results from a federally funded study to Chinese competitors in exchange for tuition, rent and other expenses, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Yudong Zhu, a U.S.-educated NYU professor, and Xing Yang, a lab engineer, were released on bail after appearing in federal court in Manhattan to face commercial bribery and other charges. They left court without speaking to reporters.
The third defendant, postdoctoral fellow Ye Li, was at large. Authorities believe he flew to China before charges were brought.
A criminal complaint alleges the three provided nonpublic information about magnetic resonance imaging to a medical company in China, United Imaging Healthcare, and a research institute supported by the Chinese government.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the three men "foxes in the henhouse" who "deceived the university and others about their professional allegiances to competing Chinese interests."
Authorities described the 44-year-old Zhu as "an accomplished researcher and innovator in the field of MRI technology" who was hired as associate professor of radiology at NYU Langone Medical Center in 2008. His attorney told a judge that during his 20 years in the United States, he earned degrees from Vanderbilt and Stanford and had two children.
In 2010, Zhu received a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health for his MRI research, and later recruited Yang and Li to work for him. The complaint accuses him of arranging for United Imaging to pay for Yang and Li's expenses, including tuition for Yang and rent for Li, and says all three failed to disclose to NYU that they were still affiliated with both the company and the Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology.
Earlier this year, NYU launched an internal review that uncovered the conflict of interest, authorities said. Last month, security cameras captured Yang taking photos of equipment in one research area, and emails showed that Zhu and Yang corresponded with United Imaging about "MRI equipment prototypes, experiments and project updates," the complaint said.
When confronted by NYU administrators, Li told them that he was paid thousands of dollars this year by the Chinese institute for work on its MRI project and that Zhu "performs the same work on research for that project as he does for the university," the complaint says.
NYU Langone Medical Center "is deeply disappointed by the news of the alleged conduct by its employees," said its spokesman, Christopher Rucas, adding that the three had been suspended.
The men face up to five years in prison if convicted of the bribery count. Zhu also faces up to 20 years on a separate charge of falsifying records in connection with his federal grant.
The case comes amid growing concerns by U.S. officials that China is stealing trade secrets, mainly through cyberattacks. Chinese officials say the accusations are groundless.
The Shenzen institute is a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It states its mission as promoting innovation and development through "self-owned intellectual property," U.S. authorities said.
NYU Researchers Gave Secrets To Chinese Competitors, Feds Say
NEW YORK — Three New York University researchers from China divulged results from a federally funded study to Chinese competitors in exchange for tuition, rent and other expenses, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Yudong Zhu, a U.S.-educated NYU professor, and Xing Yang, a lab engineer, were released on bail after appearing in federal court in Manhattan to face commercial bribery and other charges. They left court without speaking to reporters.
The third defendant, postdoctoral fellow Ye Li, was at large. Authorities believe he flew to China before charges were brought.
A criminal complaint alleges the three provided nonpublic information about magnetic resonance imaging to a medical company in China, United Imaging Healthcare, and a research institute supported by the Chinese government.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the three men "foxes in the henhouse" who "deceived the university and others about their professional allegiances to competing Chinese interests."
Authorities described the 44-year-old Zhu as "an accomplished researcher and innovator in the field of MRI technology" who was hired as associate professor of radiology at NYU Langone Medical Center in 2008. His attorney told a judge that during his 20 years in the United States, he earned degrees from Vanderbilt and Stanford and had two children.
In 2010, Zhu received a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health for his MRI research, and later recruited Yang and Li to work for him. The complaint accuses him of arranging for United Imaging to pay for Yang and Li's expenses, including tuition for Yang and rent for Li, and says all three failed to disclose to NYU that they were still affiliated with both the company and the Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology.
Earlier this year, NYU launched an internal review that uncovered the conflict of interest, authorities said. Last month, security cameras captured Yang taking photos of equipment in one research area, and emails showed that Zhu and Yang corresponded with United Imaging about "MRI equipment prototypes, experiments and project updates," the complaint said.
When confronted by NYU administrators, Li told them that he was paid thousands of dollars this year by the Chinese institute for work on its MRI project and that Zhu "performs the same work on research for that project as he does for the university," the complaint says.
NYU Langone Medical Center "is deeply disappointed by the news of the alleged conduct by its employees," said its spokesman, Christopher Rucas, adding that the three had been suspended.
The men face up to five years in prison if convicted of the bribery count. Zhu also faces up to 20 years on a separate charge of falsifying records in connection with his federal grant.
The case comes amid growing concerns by U.S. officials that China is stealing trade secrets, mainly through cyberattacks. Chinese officials say the accusations are groundless.
The Shenzen institute is a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It states its mission as promoting innovation and development through "self-owned intellectual property," U.S. authorities said.
2 Fierce Food Competitors To Combine Forces
NEW YORK — Rival online takeout services Seamless North America and GrubHub on Monday announced plans to combine and create a new company covering more than 20,000 restaurants in 500 cities across the U.S.
Financial terms were not disclosed and it's unclear what the combined company will be called. GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney will become CEO, while Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will serve as president, the companies said in a joint statement.
Brian McAndrews, an independent director on the Seamless board, will serve as chairman. Both New York-based Seamless and Chicago-based GrubHub will have significant representation on the new company's board.
The combined company's name and marketing brands will be determined following regulatory approval, the companies said.
Online takeout ordering services work by contracting with restaurants, mostly in large metropolitan areas, to list themselves on the websites. Diners can search the menus, along with reviews posted by diners, to find the food they want and then order and pay online. In addition to websites, both companies offer smartphone and tablet apps geared toward diners on the go.
"We are excited to combine the strengths of these two dynamic organizations in an industry that is rapidly gaining traction," Maloney said in a statement. "We believe the merger will enhance the products we are able to offer both our diners and restaurants."
Maloney, who co-founded GrubHub Inc. in 2004, said that by combining their complementary restaurant and diner networks the new company will be well positioned for continued growth in what's become a huge market.
The services appeal to diners by eliminating the need for a kitchen drawer of takeout menus, while also helping them discover new pickup and delivery options in their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, restaurants can benefit from new business and don't have to deal with as many phone orders, which can be labor intensive and prone to error.
Last year, orders through the two privately held companies totaled about $875 million in gross food sales, resulting in combined revenue of more than $100 million. They also aggressively vied with each other for market share, heavily promoting themselves through social media and email offers and discounts.
Seamless North America LLC was spun off from Aramark Corp. last fall. Before that, Spectrum Equity Investors bought a minority stake in the company for $50 million. Seamless covers about 12,000 restaurants in 40 cities, mostly on the East and West Coasts, along with Houston and Austin, Texas, and overseas in London.
GrubHub's ordering services cover 20,000 restaurants in about 500 cities. Since its inception, the company, which also owns Allmenus.com, has received about $84 million in funding.
In addition to Seamless and GrubHub, other similar services have popped up in recent years. Delivery.com, founded in 2004, lets users order from nearly 10,000 restaurants in 50 cities, while California-based Eat24.com, founded in 2008, covers 20,000 restaurants in 1,000 cities across the country.
Online deals site LivingSocial also launched a similar service late last year.
2 Men Arrested After Teen Was Run Over For His iPad
Two men have been arrested in the killing of a teenage boy over an iPad in Las Vegas, police said Sunday.
Jacob Dismont, 18, and Michael Solid, 21, were booked Saturday into the Clark County jail on charges of open murder, robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.
According to investigators, Marcos Arenas, 15, was walking down a street with the iPad on Thursday when a passenger got out of a vehicle and tried to steal the device from him.
Dismont is accused of trying to wrest the tablet away and dragging Arenas toward the SUV when the youth wouldn't let go of the device. After Dismont re-entered the vehicle and Solid sped away, the teen was dragged until he fell. The vehicle ran over Arenas and he died at a hospital.
"I think both the public and police department share the same sentiment that this was a senseless act of violence," police spokesman Bill Cassell told The Associated Press.
The suspects succeeded in making off with the device, officers said, but it was not immediately recovered.
Ivan Arenas said he bought the iPad for his son less than two months ago. The family has never had a lot, the father said, and his son valued everything he had.
"For him to lose his life over an iPad, it's just not fair," Ivan Arenas told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Never in my life would I imagine that me buying my kid an iPad for his birthday would end up with him getting run over."
Similar thefts of iPads, IPhones and other Apple devices have become so widespread nationwide that the crime has earned the nickname, "Apple picking," Cassell said.
"This is a nationwide phenomenon where thieves are targeting individuals who are carrying them," he said.
Police urge victims of such crimes to always let go of the devices.
According to investigators, Solid has an arrest record of possession of a stolen vehicle, petty larceny, robbery and assault. Dismont does not have any prior adult arrests.
Arenas family spokeswoman Tabitha Guertler said family members are relieved by the arrests and grateful for the quick response by police and the public.
"We are very, very relieved and grateful that these men have been apprehended and can't hurt anyone else," she said. "We're traumatized. Marcos' loss is something that will be with us forever. He was such an incredible person."
The oldest of 10 children in the family, the teen was a student at Bonanza High School. The attack occurred in the late afternoon about a half-mile from the school.
What Do We Eat? New Food Map Will Tell Us
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Do your kids love chocolate milk? It may have more calories on average than you thought.
Same goes for soda.
Until now, the only way to find out what people in the United States eat and how many calories they consume has been government data, which can lag behind the rapidly expanding and changing food marketplace.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are trying to change that by creating a gargantuan map of what foods Americans are buying and eating.
Part of the uniqueness of the database is its ability to sort one product into what it really is – thousands of brands and variations.
Take the chocolate milk.
The government long has long classified chocolate milk with 2 percent fat as one item. But the UNC researchers, using scanner data from grocery stores and other commercial data, found thousands of different brands and variations of 2 percent chocolate milk and averaged them out. The results show that chocolate milk has about 11 calories per cup more than the government thought.
The researchers led by professor Barry Popkin at the UNC School of Public Health, are figuring out that chocolate milk equation over and over, with every single item in the grocery store. It's a massive project that could be the first evidence of how rapidly the marketplace is changing, and the best data yet on what exact ingredients and nutrients people are consuming.
That kind of information could be used to better target nutritional guidelines, push companies to cut down on certain ingredients and even help with disease research.
Just call it "mapping the food genome."
"The country needs something like this, given all of the questions about our food supply," says Popkin, the head of the UNC Food Research Program. "We're interested in improving the public's health and it really takes this kind of knowledge."
The project first came together in 2010 after a group of 16 major food companies pledged, as part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to combat obesity, to reduce the calories they sell to the public by 1.5 trillion. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation agreed to fund a study to hold the companies accountable, eventually turning to UNC with grants totaling $6.7 million.
Aided by supercomputers on campus, Popkin and his team have taken existing commercial databases of food items in stores and people's homes, including the store-based scanner data of 600,000 different foods, and matched that information with the nutrition facts panels on the back of packages and government data on individuals' dietary intake.
The result is an enormous database that has taken almost three years so far to construct and includes more detail than researchers have ever had on grocery store items – their individual nutritional content, who is buying them and their part in consumers' diets.
The study will fill gaps in current data about the choices available to consumers and whether they are healthy, says Susan Krebs-Smith, who researches diet and other risk factors related to cancer at the National Cancer Institute.
Government data, long the only source of information about American eating habits, can have a lag of several years and neglect entire categories of new types of products – Greek yogurt or energy drinks, for example.
With those significant gaps, the government information fails to account for the rapid change now seen in the marketplace. Now more than ever, companies are reformulating products on the fly as they try to make them healthier or better tasting.
While consumers may not notice changes in the ingredient panel on the back of the package, the UNC study will pick up small variations in individual items and also begin to be able to tell how much the marketplace as a whole is evolving.
"When we are done we will probably see 20 percent change in the food supply in a year," Popkin says. "The food supply is changing and no one really knows how."
For example, the researchers have found that there has been an increase in using fruit concentrate as a sweetener in foods and beverages because of a propensity toward natural foods, even though it isn't necessarily healthier than other sugars. While the soda and chocolate milk have more calories on average than the government thought, the federal numbers were more accurate on the calories in milk and cereals.
Popkin and his researchers are hoping their project will only be the beginning of a map that consumers, companies, researchers and even the government can use, breaking the data down to find out who is eating what and where they shop. Is there a racial divide in the brand of potato chips purchased, for example, and what could that mean for health? Does diet depend on where you buy your food – the grocery store or the convenience store? How has the recession affected dietary intake?
"It's only since I've really started digging into this that I have realized how little we know about what we are eating," says Meghan Slining, a UNC nutrition professor and researcher on the project.
Steven Gortmaker, director of the Harvard School of Public Health Prevention Research Center, says the data could help researchers figure out how people are eating in certain communities and then how to address problems in those diets that could lead to obesity or disease.
"The more information we have, the more scientists can be brainstorming about what kinds of interventions or policy changes we could engage in," Gortmaker said.
But the information doesn't include restaurant meals and some prepared foods, about one-third of what Americans eat. If the project receives continued funding, those foods eventually could be added to the study, a prospect that would be made easier by pending menu labeling regulations that will force chain restaurants to post calories for every item.
Popkin and his researchers say that packaged foods have long been the hardest to monitor because of the sheer volume and rapid change in the marketplace.
The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, an industry group representing the 16 companies that made the pledge to reduce 1.5 trillion calories, says it will report this summer on how successful they've been, according to Lisa Gable, the group's president. The first results from Popkin's study aren't expected until later this year.
Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, says the data could be useful in pressuring companies to make more changes for the better. Companies often use "the research isn't there" as a defense against making changes recommended by public health groups, she notes, and it can be hard to prove them wrong.
"What people eat is the great mystery of nutrition," Nestle says. "It would be wonderful to have a handle on it."
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Online:
UNC Food Research Program: http://uncfoodresearchprogram.web.unc.edu
Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation: http://www.healthyweightcommit.org
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Find Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
YouTube Video Shows Kidnapped Egyptian Security Force Members
CAIRO — Seven men purported to be the members of Egypt's security forces kidnapped by suspected militants last week appeared in a video posted online Sunday and urged the government to secure their release by meeting their captors' demands.
The video, posted on YouTube, is the first sign of the six policemen and one border guard since they were abducted by gunmen on the road from the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo on Thursday. Egyptian security officials said they believed the men in the clip were the missing personnel and that authorities were treating the matter seriously. The father of one of the captives identified his son in the video.
The kidnappings have embarrassed President Mohammed Morsi's government, and are seen as a test of his administration's ability to restore security to the volatile peninsula. They also have renewed a national debate on how best to tackle the troubles in northern Sinai, which borders Gaza and Israel. While many called for a swift security response, some argued that such a move would spark a backlash.
Authorities have been in contact with the kidnappers through mediators. The kidnappers have demanded the release of several militants held in Egyptian jails, including some convicted during Mubarak's rule, officials say.
In a statement Sunday, the president said that there is "no room for dialogue with the criminals" responsible for the kidnappings. The statement followed a meeting Morsi held with politicians from largely Islamist groups to brief them on efforts to secure the captives' release.
The president wrote on the social media website Twitter Sunday evening that "all options are on the table" to free the men and that the government will "not succumb to blackmail."
Sinai has been wracked by lawlessness since the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak. Criminal gangs, militants and local tribesmen disgruntled with what they say is state-sponsored discrimination have exploited the security vacuum to smuggle weapons, attack security forces and kidnap tourists to trade for relatives held in Egyptian jails.
In the video released Sunday, the men, blindfolded and holding their hands on their heads, introduce themselves one by one.
One of the men identified himself as Cpl. Ibrahim Sobhi Ibrahim and asked Egypt's leaders to free jailed Sinai militants.
"The demands of the brothers, Mr. President, is the release of political prisoners from Sinai," he says. "Please, Mr. President, release them quickly. We can no longer tolerate torture."
The video closes with the men pleading to the camera: "Rescue us, Mr. President. We can't take it. Rescue us, people." At one point, the tip of a rifle appears over the head of some of the captives, before it is swiftly pulled back off the screen. There were no visible signs of torture on the young men.
It was not immediately clear who posted the video, which was uploaded to a YouTube account created Sunday. Later YouTube took it down, saying it violated its policy on violence.
An Egyptian security official identified the captives in the video as the missing personnel. He said a copy of the video was sent to security agencies, but it was not immediately clear by whom. Another security official in Cairo said families and friends of the captives were called in to identify their relatives.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
The names of five of the missing also correspond with names previously obtained by The Associated Press.
Security officials say they believe the assailants carried out the kidnapping after being angered over reports that a prisoner, Ahmed Abu Sheta, had been tortured while in jail. Abu Shehata was convicted of attacking a police station in 2011 that killed police officers.
After meeting Morsi on Sunday, Younes Makhyoun, a leading member of the ultraconservative Islamist Salafi al-Nour party, said the president is eager to avoid a security response.
"Even though there are voices who are demanding security interference and decisiveness, (Morsi) said he wants to rescue the soldiers peacefully, and is keeping the engagement with local tribesmen," Makhyoun told The Associated Press. "The security solution would be easiest, but he wants to save lives."
Makhyoun said his party is also against a security solution because it would lead to bloodshed and won't resolve the problem – a lingering feeling of injustice by many of those who were convicted and arrested during the Mubarak era. He said the kidnappers' demands include the release of as many as 600 prisoners, some of whom were convicted before 2011. A way out, he said, would be to offer retrials for those convicted in the past or in haste.
Mohammed Abdel-Hamid, the father of one of the policemen, told the private Al-Youm TV station that his son was in the video. He said he would rather see his son dead than have his release negotiated.
Expressing their anger at the recent kidnapping, scores of policemen blocked a commercial border crossing with Israel Sunday to protest the abduction of their colleagues. The policemen closed the main gates of the Awja crossing with chains, leaving around 40 trucks stranded, according to local official Ahmed Osman.
On Friday, policemen blocked a border crossing into Gaza. There was no indication that either Israel or the Palestinians were involved in the kidnapping.
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Associated Press writer Ashraf Sweilam contributed to this report from south Sinai.
Minister In Trouble After ‘Liking’ Exposed Teen Pic
SYDNEY — An Australian politician says he has learned a valuable lesson in social networking after he "liked" a Facebook photo without realizing that it showed a teenage prankster exposing himself.
Western Australia Minister for Education Peter Collier said he clicked the "like" button under what he thought was an innocent photo of the then-16-year-old in late 2011. Collier apologized Thursday and said he had no idea that the teen, who was otherwise fully clothed and posing alongside an older man, was playing a prank commonly known as "sneaky nuts."
"At first glance it appeared to be a harmless picture," Collier said in a statement. "It was a silly mistake on my part. I only became aware of the actual content of the photo when shown by a journalist today. This obviously highlights the pitfalls of social media. I apologize if I caused any offense."
The stunt was popularized by Australian comedian Chris Lilley's TV show "Angry Boys," in which a character revels in ruining group photos by secretly exposing himself. The prank has been a headache for some educators: Last year, administrators at a Catholic school in Canada scrambled to place stickers over a photo printed in all 1,300 class yearbooks of a student subtly exposing his genitals.
The Australia incident did not attract attention until late last month, when the teen bragged on Twitter about fooling Collier, whom he was friends with on Facebook.
It Was Suppose To Be Our IPO
NEW YORK (AP) — It was supposed to be our IPO, the people's public offering.
Facebook, the brainchild of a young CEO who sauntered into Wall Street meetings in a hoodie, was going to be bigger than Amazon, bigger than McDonald's, bigger than Coca-Cola. And it was all made possible by our friendships, photos and family ties.
Then came the IPO, and it flopped. Facebook's stock finished its first day of trading just 23 cents higher than its $38 IPO price. It hasn't been that high since.
Even amid the hype and excitement surrounding Facebook's May 18 stock market debut a year ago, there were looming doubts. Investors wondered whether the social network could increase advertising revenue without alienating users, especially those using smartphones and tablet computers.
The worries intensified just days before the IPO when General Motors said it would stop paying for advertisements on the site. The symbolic exit cast a shroud over Facebook that still exists. Facebook's market value is $63 billion, some two-thirds of what it was the morning it first began trading. At around $27 per share, the company's stock is down roughly 30 percent from its IPO price. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 27 percent over the same period.
Despite its disappointing stock market performance, the company has delivered strong financial results. Net income increased 7 percent to $219 million in the most recent quarter, compared with the previous year, and revenue was up 38 percent to $1.46 billion.
The world's biggest online social network has also kept growing to 1.1 billion users. Some 665 million people check in every day to share photos, comment on news articles and play games. Millions of people around the world who don't own a computer use Facebook, in Malawi, Malaysia and Martinique.
And much has changed at Facebook in a year. The company's executives and engineers have quietly addressed the very doubts that dogged the company for so long. Facebook began showing mobile advertisements for the first time just after the IPO. It launched a search feature in January and unveiled a branded Facebook smartphone in April. The company also introduced ways for advertisers to gauge the effectiveness of their ads.
Even GM has returned as a paying advertiser.
Now, Facebook is looking to its next challenge: convincing big brand-name consumer companies that advertisements on a social network are as important — and as effective — as television spots.
"We aspire to have ads, to show ads that improve the content experience over time," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts recently. "And if we continue making progress on this, then one day we can get there."
To achieve those aims, the company has rolled out tools to help advertisers target their messages more precisely than they can in print or on television. Companies can single out 18- to 24-year-old male Facebook users who are likely to buy a car in the next six months. They can target 30-year-old women who are researching Caribbean getaways.
Analytic tools like these weren't available a year ago. But last fall Facebook hired several companies that collect and analyze data related to people's online and offline behavior. Facebook's advertisers can now assess whether a Crest ad you saw on Facebook likely led you to buy of a tube of toothpaste in the drugstore. The services take what Facebook knows about you and what ads you saw and combine this with the information retailers have about you and what you've purchased through loyalty cards and the like.
Advertisers are also making use of Facebook's partnership with audience measurement firm Nielsen Co. Nielsen introduced a tool last fall that helps marketers discover "not only who saw their ad online and who saw their ad on TV, but also how these audiences match up," says David Wong, vice president at product leadership at Nielsen.
Sean Bruich, Facebook's head of measurement platforms and standards, believes the new tools are paying off.
"What we can see conclusively a year after the IPO is that ads on Facebook really do help drive people into the store and help them make purchasing decisions, help influence their purchasing decisions," he says.
A recent Nielsen analysis found that consumers are 55 percent more likely to recall "social ads" than traditional online ads.
So powerful is Facebook's new analytic arsenal that privacy advocates are growing concerned about the potential intrusiveness of merging consumers' online and offline experiences.
People "are getting served ads based on things they didn't put on Facebook and maybe wouldn't be comfortable putting on Facebook," says Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil-liberties firm. Facebook says mechanisms are in place to protect privacy.
"We've never had anything like Facebook," Reitman says. "We've never had an entity that was able to collect so much information on so much of the world's population, ever."
Advertisers aren't complaining.
"Anywhere that more than a billion people spend time with their friends each month is extremely valuable to us," says Brad Ruffkess, connection strategist at Coca-Cola.
At Procter and Gamble, the world's biggest advertiser, "we saw almost from the start that social media is the world's largest focus group," says Marc Pritchard, the company's global brand building officer.
Both companies are important advertisers on Facebook and members of the company's client council, a group of more than a dozen brands and ad agencies that have met regularly with Facebook executives since 2011 to talk about advertising and marketing on the site. Other members include Unilever, AT&T, Walmart and GroupM North America, a subsidiary of advertising agency giant WPP.
Still, some advertisers remain skeptical. Ryan Holiday, director of marketing at American Apparel, is critical of Facebook's "sponsored stories." These are messages from marketers that are interwoven into users' news feeds. He says the clothing company spends less than 10 percent of its online advertising budget with Facebook.
One thing is increasingly clear: The future belongs to mobile advertising. And just a year ago, Facebook warned investors it was behind in capturing this market. In response, Facebook retrained engineers and rebuilt its mobile applications, which users complained were clunky. Now, there's an explosion in the number of ads shoehorned in between status updates and cat photos.
"The transition to mobile happened even faster than we believed," says Carolyn Everson, vice president of global marketing solutions at Facebook.
In the first three months of 2013, Facebook generated $375 million in revenue from mobile ads, about 30 percent of its total ad revenue. That's impressive given that Facebook had no mobile ads at all just a year ago.
And there's room to grow. Research firm eMarketer estimates that U.S. mobile advertising spending will grow to $7.29 billion this year, up fivefold from 2011. Facebook is expected to capture some 13 percent of the market, a distant second behind Google at nearly 55 percent, according to eMarketer. By 2015, the mobile ad market is expected to hit $16.2 billion.
Facebook's stronger grasp of mobile advertising helped get General Motors back.
"Mobile was something GM was particularly passionate about," says Everson, who joined Facebook two years ago from Microsoft Corp., where she headed global ad sales.
Everson says she sees Facebook as a future advertising empire. The goal is to help companies achieve so-called cross-platform marketing and target people with ads wherever they might be — in front of smartphones, tablets or TV sets.
"A lot of people might argue that TV is the first screen and mobile is the companion screen," she says. Her take: Mobile is now the first screen. And Facebook's hope is that advertisers will soon see it this way, too.
"Your customer is walking around with the most personal device they've ever had every single day, checking it 12 to, you know, more than 24 times a day depending on the market," Everson says. "This is a mass medium."
At the end of last year, 87 percent of Americans owned a cellphone and nearly half owned a smartphone, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Worldwide, research firm Gartner puts the size of the mobile phone market at 4.4 billion, enough to give one phone to nearly two-thirds of the world's population.
Of course, television still accounts for the biggest slice of worldwide ad spending, and nearly 96 percent of American households own a TV set. ZenithOptimedia, a forecaster owned by the ad agency Publicis Groupe SA, says television accounted for 40 percent of worldwide ad spending, compared with the Internet's share of 18 percent. By 2015, the Internet is expected to grow its share to more than 23 percent, but largely at the expense of newspapers and magazines. TV is expected to hold steady.
"On any given day in the U.S. alone, you can reach 100 million people on mobile," Everson says. "Those numbers are not seen across any TV or print opportunity. I think it's going to take hold, this message."
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Find Barbara Ortutay on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay
Ben Bernanke To Grads: You Will Have To Reinvent Yourself
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says pessimists forecasting that the economy will not reap sizable benefits from the computer revolution are likely to be proven wrong.
Bernanke told a college graduating class Saturday that the long-range practical consequences of innovations such as faster computers and the Internet are hard to predict. But he said inventors have only scratched the surface of the commercial applications that can be obtained in such fields as medicine and clean energy.
Bernanke's remarks came in a commencement address at Bard College at Simon's Rock, a small liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Bernanke's son Joel graduated from the school in 2006.
The Fed chairman did not make any comments about interest rates in his speech, saying he wanted to use his address to focus not on short-range economic problems but to speak about economic growth measured in decades.
"We live on a planet that is becoming richer and more populous and in which not only the most advanced economies but also large emerging market nations like China and India increasingly see their futures as tied to technological innovation," Bernanke said in a text of his remarks, which were released in Washington.
"The number of trained scientists and engineers is increasing rapidly, as are the resources for research being provided by universities, governments and the private sector," he said. "Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history."
Bernanke cited these factors to bolster the view that the current computer revolution will prove just as beneficial to increasing living standards as past industrial revolutions that gave the world the steam engine and railroads and then later electricity and airplanes.
The Fed chairman told the new graduates that the best way to succeed will be to keep learning.
"During your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times," he said. "Success and satisfaction will not come from mastering a fixed body of knowledge but from constant adaptation and creativity in a rapidly changing world."
Congress Gets Mixed Advice On Drone Regulations
WASHINGTON — The growing use of unmanned surveillance "eyes in the sky" aircraft raises a thicket of privacy concerns, but Congress is getting mixed advice on what, if anything, to do about it.
A future with domestic drones may be inevitable. While civilian drone use is currently limited to government agencies and some public universities, a law passed by Congress last year requires the Federal Aviation Administration to allow widespread drone flights in the U.S. by 2015. According to FAA estimates, as many as 7,500 civilian drones could be in use within five years.
"Technology is great – as long as it's used the right and proper way," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Friday on the issues surrounding drones – which can be as small as a bird and as large as a plane.
Congress isn't alone in seeking to address the issues: Since January, drone-related legislation has been introduced in more than 30 states, largely in response to privacy concerns.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said it was important for new standards to address the privacy issues associated with use of drones. With Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, he is sponsoring legislation that would codify due process protections for Americans in cases involving drones and make flying armed drones in the U.S. sky illegal.
"Every advancement in crime fighting technology, from wiretaps to DNA, has resulted in courts carving out the Constitutional limits within which the police operate," Sensenbrenner said.
The subcommittee heard from experts who were divided on what actions Congress should take to address the new technology. But the four witnesses all agreed that drones raised new, often unprecedented questions about domestic surveillance.
"Current law has yet to catch up to this new technology," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Calabrese said he supported immediate regulation of the drone industry and said his biggest concern was the overuse of drones by police and government officials for surveillance. But Calabrese said he doesn't want to hinder the growth of drones with the power to do good, including helping find missing persons, assisting firefighters and addressing other emergencies.
Tracey Maclin, a professor with the Boston University School of Law, said the issues raised by drones haven't been addressed by courts before because the technology goes beyond what humans had been capable of through aerial surveillance.
Past court rulings, "were premised on naked-eye observations – simple visual observations from a public place," he said.
Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., said he wanted to know when drone technology will advance to the point where Congress will have to act on the issue. He said he was concerned about the effect on privacy.
"At what point do you think it's going to get to a point where we have to say what a reasonable expectation of privacy is?" Richmond said.
Republicans expressed similar concerns.
"It seems to me that Congress needs to set the standard, rather than wait and let the courts set the standard," Poe said.
Some experts urged caution.
Gregory McNeal, an associate law professor at Pepperdine University, said writing laws to cover drones will be difficult because the technology continues to improve and Congress could think it's addressing key issues, only to have new ones emerge.
He compared drones to the privacy concerns raised by development of the Internet in the 1990s. Regulating then, he said, could have stymied the rapid growth of the Internet and wouldn't have addressed today's Internet privacy issues.
If Congress feels compelled to act, McNeal said, it should think in terms broader than a "drone policy" and set standards for surveillance or realistic expectations of privacy. "A technology-centered approach to privacy is the wrong approach," he said.
But the ACLU's Calabrese said Congress should work quickly.
"This can't be adequately addressed by existing law," he said. "Manned aircraft are expensive to purchase. Drones' low cost and flexibility erode that natural limit. They can appear in windows, all for much less than the cost of a plane or a helicopter."
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Follow Henry C. Jackson on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hjacksonap
Bloomberg Appoints Privacy Advisor In Wake Of Scandal
NEW YORK — Bloomberg LP, the financial news and information service, on Friday said it has appointed Samuel Palmisano, the former CEO of IBM, as an independent adviser on its privacy and data standards.
The move comes a week after revelations that Bloomberg journalists had access to some information on customers' use of Bloomberg's data terminals, including when they last logged in.
The company apologized for the breach of privacy. The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have said they are looking into Bloomberg's use of data.
Palmisano will review Bloomberg's practices and policies for client data and advise on changes, the company said.
Bloomberg also said Clark Hoyt, an editor at Bloomberg and the former editor-at-large at The New York Times, will review the relationship between Bloomberg's news service and its commercial operations.
Bloomberg News reporters had been able to see when any of the company's 315,000 paying subscribers, mostly stock and bond traders, had last logged into the news and information service. They could also view the types of "functions" individual subscribers had accessed.
Palmisano, 61, retired from the CEO post in January 2012. He remained chairman until October.
